A Virtual Tour of Israel - Part 2

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I should say that I'm indebted for what I've showed you last week and this week to several people. I used some of my own slides and... or some of my own photos. I also used some photos that Charlie Yates gave me. I appreciate his sharing those with me from his - from the trip. And I'm deeply indebted to Todd Boland, who has taken some of the best pictures of the Holy Land that exist. And if you're interested in seeing some of them and even in purchasing them, you can on his website: bibleplaces.com. He is a member of the Master's College Ibex staff, over in Israel and teaches there regularly the students who come. And he's had opportunity to take these pictures in the best of times. And so, I'm using - relying heavily on some of his photos to explain these things as well as even some of his information as well.

So, last time we were up in Galilee. Tonight, we want to take the journey south as pilgrims would have done. They would have started up in the Galilee and come down the Jordan Rift, as it's called. They would have come next to on the east side of the Jordan. It's called the Transjordan Highway or the King's Highway at times. Jesus would have done this. He would have traveled from His home in Capernaum, up on the north side of the Sea of Galilee, down for at least three feasts each year. There are records in the New Testament of His being in Jerusalem for Passover, for Tabernacles, and for Hanukkah. And so, as He traveled, on occasion, He would travel through the hill country, through Samaria, over here in this area. But most of the time, the pilgrims would travel down on the east side of the Jordan Rift and come to Jericho, and then from Jericho on up to Jerusalem. The Jordan Rift is a 4000-mile-long fissure in the face of the earth and all of it, there in Israel, is below sea level. The Sea of Galilee is 600 feet below sea level and the water flows down the Jordan, toward the Dead Sea, where the surface of the Dead Sea is 1300 feet below sea level, the lowest spot on earth.

Now, one spot that I want to show you just a couple of pictures of... And some of the places I'm going to show you here initially, I'm just going to breeze through because they don't figure heavily in the biblical account. And we're going to spend most of our time in Jerusalem. But one that's right there on that key route, a strategic Roman city called Beit Shean. It was a shortcut from the coastal highway, or the international highway, that ran up the flat part of the coast, through the Jezreel Valley, to the Transjordanian highway that ran on this side. And right there, in that key spot, is the city of Beit Shean.

It was destroyed by an earthquake and they're now kind of putting it back together. And it's really a fascinating place to visit because you can see an entire Roman town, sort of as it was in the time of Christ. And there's a huge theater there, a number of other - a bathhouse. All of those things that are Roman, you can go to Beit Shean and see. It was a strategic place there to guard that route for the Romans. But in that hill, that you see in front, is a tel. Remember what we talked about? One city destroyed, smoothed over, another city built on top, again and again and again. That's what that hill there in front is. That's a tel. And that is where the bodies of Saul and Jonathan were hung on the wall after their death, at this site - Beit Shean.

Now, let's kind of move our way down the Jordan. I'm going to show you several pictures of the Jordan. Today, because large quantities of the Jordan River are siphoned off for water in both Israel and Jordan, the Jordan River today is a small winding, sort of dirty stream. It's not much to see. It would have been much larger in the time of Christ, but this gives you a little idea of what the Jordan Valley looks like. And you can see the Jordan River flowing through about the middle there, across from left to right. Again, this is the Jordan Rift. Very few of Israel's people lived in this area because of the heat, because it was so low below sea level. And it was stifling, plus it was right on the border of the country which made it a place that was ripe for bands of marauders to come in and attack your home. And so, in this, in that day, it was very seldom populated. Here's a picture of the Jordan at the upper end, near the Sea of Galilee. And then we'll just kind of move our way down. You can kind of see how the terrain changes as you continue marching down the Jordan Rift.

Now, you come all the way down the Jordan Rift. There are a couple of cities down here on the south I want to show you, a couple of things. The city of Ein Gedi, where that red arrow is pointing, there on the west side of the Dead Sea, and the ancient side of Masada. So, let me just show you a couple of things here. This is the Dead Sea on the right. And then the... where the red circle is, is Ein Gedi. Ein Gedi. And Ein Gedi, of course, is famous for David - one of the places he hid. If you were leaving Jerusalem, you would travel across the Judean hill country, and you would come to either Jericho, on the north side of the Dead Sea, or Ein Gedi, in the mid-part of the Dead Sea because there's where you needed to get water. You needed to refresh your animals, if you had animals. And so, David was here at Ein Gedi. And in fact, you remember the story of his hiding in the cave. We don't know what cave he hid in, but this area is filled with caves because of the nature of the rock that's here. And so, he hid in the cave - you remember the story - and Saul came in to relieve himself, and David cut off a portion of his robe, and later taunted him, and then regretted that he had done that. That happened here at Ein Gedi.

Now, you'll notice where the arrow is on the north side there. We're looking, from the south end of the Dead Sea, north. You'll see in Ein Gedi toward the north. And then down to the south here you see Masada. Masada was a fortress palace complex that Herod built. It's fascinating. I'm going to show you a few pictures, but we're not going to spend a lot of time here because it doesn't figure heavily in the biblical account. You can see some interesting things there. You see the Roman siege wall. You see the main Roman camps. You can still see them to this day where they stacked the rocks. The Romans always did things very regularly and it's done very systematically. And so, you can see them even to this day.

On the top of that that hill, that escarpment, Herod built a great palace fortress. You can see the northern face of his palace there, where he actually resided. That's what artists say it looked like in its prime. They're built on the side of the hill - the Dead Sea on one side and the great view of all of that for Herod to enjoy. It was a beautiful place. These are some of the original frescoes. You can see how richly colored the paints that were used.

Also, there was a Roman bathhouse there, as you would expect. Essentially, this is the hot room, the main room of the bath. It was a floor suspended on these pillars - 200 pillars. There was a furnace outside that sent hot air underneath. And then if you threw water down on the floor, steam would result. There were also pipes in the walls, as you can see, to help heat the room. And the ceiling was even vaulted. They've been able to discover so that condensation didn't fall on those who were bathing in this hot room.

A mosaic from Herod's western palace up on the top of that hill - some 34,000 square feet was the size of his palace. Nice little place to spend the summer. And you see these beautiful mosaics. These are naturally colored rocks. They're not tiles. This is a mosaic made to look like marble. In fact, it was so well done and it's time that Josephus wrote that the walls were covered in marble because they even painted the lines and everything else. Faux painting is nothing new.

The story ends on top of Masada when the people, the Jewish people, the Jewish zealots, you remember, are surrounded by the Romans and end up deciding that they're going to commit mass suicide. These are the lots they found. Ten men were selected, by lot, to kill everybody else. One of them then selected to kill the rest of them and finally killing himself near his family. They found what they think is that man and his wife and child in one section of the palace.

Now, leaving Masada, we move slightly up the Dead Sea to the northern corner where Qumran is. This is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. This is the most famous of the Dead Sea scroll caves. I think there were over 30 or so caves found. But this is the most famous - cave number four. More than 15,000 fragments from over 200 books were found in this cave. 122 biblical scrolls or fragments were found here. This is what it looks like inside the cave. And here's the most famous thing found in the Dead Sea Scrolls - an entire copy of the book of Isaiah written or copied, I should say, 130 years before Christ. The wonderful thing about the Dead Sea Scrolls is that they documented just how carefully the text had been preserved, because when they found this copy 130 years before - written 130 years before Christ, it was almost letter for letter with the copies we had dating almost 1000 years later. And so, remarkable to see how well the text of Scripture was preserved.

Alright. Well, let's go back up. We're traveling down from Galilee and we're going to go to Jerusalem. When we get to the bottom end of the Jordan Rift, we come to the city of Jericho. This was the stopping place between Galilee and Jerusalem, because there was water. And once you get to the Judean wilderness, there is no water. And so, Jesus passed through this town on a number of occasions. You remember the very famous story of Zacchaeus happened in Jericho, as he was making his way down the Jordan Rift to Jericho, and then up to Jerusalem. Now, the reason we say "up to Jerusalem" will be apparent in a moment.

This is the Jericho plain, looking to the east with the ancient city tell, there in the foreground. But this is what it looks from the air - what it looks like from the air. You can see that the northern pointing arrow, down in the right-hand corner - that gives you some orientation. You see the Jordan Valley where I've marked it there. And then, Jericho, the town of Jericho, over to the side, this is the way you would have gone up to Jerusalem. From Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea, is a drop of some 4000 feet in 18 miles. So, it is a huge grueling task up to Jerusalem.

And this is the terrain through which you would have gone. The road probably went along what's called the Wadi Qelt. A wadi is simply, you remember, a dry riverbed. It's filled when it rains. You can see it running through there. The road from Jericho to Jerusalem would probably have run along that wadi. This is what the wadi looks like if you get down there inside of it. It's large and massive, but it doesn't look very large when you see it from up high. So, that gives you some idea of the magnitude of this land. It's absolutely staggering in size and in the roughness of the terrain, and the starkness of the terrain. You would travel then, from Jericho, up to Jerusalem. And you can see the arrow is pointing to the word Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem is that red - represented by the red dot on the left side of Jerusalem.

Why is Jerusalem so important? Well, let me remind you of several things biblically that happened or will happen in Jerusalem. In Genesis 14, you remember, we are introduced to Jerusalem for the first time, when we meet the King of Salem. And much is made of that, of course, in the book of Hebrews. Genesis 22 - the sacrifice of Isaac, you remember, was on Mount Moriah. That's dead in the center of where the temple was eventually put in the city of Jerusalem. 2 Samuel 24 - the threshing floor where the angel of the Lord was stayed - threshing floor of Ornan. That was also right where the temple ends up being built in Jerusalem. Of course, most importantly, it was the place of the death and resurrection of our Lord, as Luke 9 points out. And it was the city where the gospel was first preached after the resurrection of Christ. Jesus gave that commission to His disciples. It was the site of the first church council in Acts 15. And, in the future, Revelation 21 tells us that the capital city of the new earth is called "the new Jerusalem".

Why is this city so important? Well, Psalm 48:1 calls it the "city of our God". Psalm 135:21: the Lord "dwells in Jerusalem". And even in the New Testament, Matthew 4:5, it's called the "holy city". Why? 2 Chronicles tells us. 2 Chronicles 6:6, God says, "but I have chosen Jerusalem that My name might be there..." God said, "I have an address. I have an earthly address. I can't be contained in a place, but My earthly address is Jerusalem." This was God's choice. And we talked about part of the reason for that last time, because this land was so strategically located. It was at the center of those three great continents of the ancient world. It was the land bridge connecting the people groups of the world. And so, God chose, in the ancient world, the most strategic place. Still strategic, isn't it? You still read more about this section of land in our news than any other section of land on earth. It was designed by God that way. And He chose because of that, because of its strategic placement on the face of the earth, to make it His address. That's why Jerusalem matters.

Now, here is a view of Jerusalem - an aerial shot. And I'll show you a few aerials just to place you. We're in the Mediterranean, if you will, above the Mediterranean looking east, looking toward the Dead Sea from the Mediterranean. And here you'll see the Dead Sea, over there on the right-hand side, the Judean wilderness, that we've already walked our way through coming up from Jericho. And then, as you come up, you come to the Mount of Olives. You see it located here. On the other side of the Mount of Olives, is the little town of Bethany. You would have gotten to Bethany before you got to the Mount of Olives, coming from Jericho. You remember, when Jesus came into the city, He often went to Bethany because his dear friends lived there. And He stayed on the other side, there at the Mount of Olives - very close to the city of Jerusalem. Now, the Dome of the Rock, you see there on the Temple Mount - that golden dome is kind of your GPS for a trip around Jerusalem because it'll keep you sure of where you are, in light of all of our travels around the city.

Now, if you go back to the Old Testament, Jerusalem in the Old Testament looked like this. You see the little white line? That's the modern old city. That is the walls as they exist today of the old city of Jerusalem, built in the 1500s. But you'll notice that this is how it looked in David and Solomon's day, just this tiny little part where the temple stood and then this was called the City of David. This is what David took from the Jebusites, right next to the Kidron Valley. That's all there was to it.

But let's fast-forward to the time of Jesus. Now, the best way for you to see the city... First of all, let me mention. When you look at the walls - those old walls, those walls you see in pictures (and you'll see in my pictures) understand - ignore those walls for the most part. Those walls were built in 1540 AD by Suleiman the Magnificent - a Muslim. But those walls were built on top of, in many cases, earlier walls and you can even still see the stones that Herod laid in many places. And you'll see some in my pictures tonight. But the top of the walls are all more recent.

Now, when you look about at Jerusalem, here's an overview of Jerusalem. And, what I want you to see is this is a topographical map. There are, in Jerusalem, three hills. There is the Western Hill, as it's called. There is the Eastern Hill where the Temple Mount is, where the Dome of the Rock is today. And there is, east of it, the Mount of Olives that's just off of the slide here. So, there are three hills simply called the Eastern Hill, the Western Hill, and the Mount of Olives.

There are also three valleys. There is, if you can see that yellow line that I just drew there on the left side - that is the Hinnom Valley. It runs on the west side of the city and on the south. In Hebrew, it's Ge-hinnom - the valley of Hinnom. When that's translated into Greek, it becomes Gehenna, which you've heard about or read about. It's the place where the offerings to Molech happened. It became, ultimately, a picture of hell because it was such a wicked place. Some theorize that the trash of the city was dumped there as well. We don't know for sure. But that's the valley of Hinnom or Gehenna, as it's called in Greek. Then there's a Central Valley that runs right through the middle of the city that separates the east and west hills. And then, the one you've probably heard about the most, is the Kidron Valley. It separates the main city of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.

Now, when you look at the city today, the focal point is the Temple Mount. And it was in Jesus' day as well. You see where the arrow is pointing to the Dome of the Rock? That whole flat area up there is the Temple Mount. You see the Kidron Valley running through there, through the middle, between the Temple and the Mount of Olives, which I've circled here. And you see north is to the right. So, that gives you a little orientation of how the city of Jerusalem sits.

But let's take you down, where you can get an idea of just how high these things are. We're standing now down in the Kidron Valley. On the left-hand side, you can see a portion of the Temple Mount. And on the right-hand side, you see the Mount of Olives. And you get some feel for just how deep the Kidron Valley is. Nothing in Israel is flat except the Temple Mount. Everything else climbs like this. The Kidron Valley, when you're looking at right here, was always Jerusalem's eastern border. It's dry year-round except during and shortly after rains, heavy rainfall. And in Jesus' time, it would have actually been flat - it would have been lower - about 50 feet they estimate, because it has filled in over time with erosion and various destruction - with destruction of the city. Things were dumped down there. They're still excavating.

Let's look the other direction. We're going to kind of turn around and pivot looking south now. We're still in the Kidron Valley. The Temple Mount is on our right, and the Mount of Olives is on our left. That gives you a little feel for what the Kidron Valley looks like. If you look up from the Kidron Valley to the Temple Mount, that's what you're looking up to. It's a massive hill.

Now, from there, from the Kidron, let's cross over onto the Mount of Olives, and take a little tour of the Mount of Olives. First of all, an overview just to remind you where we are. There is the Western Wall. You can see down here where the - one of the holiest spots to the Jews today. This whole box up here is the Temple Mount. We'll look at it a little more in a minute. Here's the Kidron Valley running this direction, Gethsemane here at the foot of Mount of Olives. And all of this mountain you see up here is the Mount of Olives. It's about 3000 feet, about a 3000-foot hill. And it's one of the main burial grounds for the city. This mountain, the Mount of Olives, was always outside the city limits. It's about two miles long and it has three summits. It's composed of a stone that is not good for building. And so, there have been buildings built up there, as you can see, but it was good primarily for hewing out caves as in burial caves. Consequently, since 3000 years before Christ, the Mount of Olives has been used as a burial ground and preserved as a garden. Very few homes planted there and that's why the Garden of Gethsemane was down on the lower side because it was protected.

Here is the Garden of Gethsemane. Now, the church built there - the Church of All Nations because all the nations of the world, or many of them, contributed to the building of the church. But the Garden of Gethsemane - this is the traditional site where Jesus and the disciples often went, including on the night before He was crucified and where He was betrayed. This is the end part of the garden that's there. These are olive trees. We don't know exactly how old these olive trees are. They probably are between 1000 and 2000 years old. They probably were not there in the time of Christ because we're told by historians that that Titus destroyed all the trees around Jerusalem in building his siege works and other things to take the city in 70 AD. But, perhaps, these were planted shortly thereafter. But it gives you an idea of the way this garden would have looked in the time of Christ. That's the Mount of Olives, a place Jesus often resorted to, to pray. He often went with His disciples when He wanted privacy from the crowds because it was surrounded by tombs and graves. Out of that, of course, came some of Jesus' graphic illustrations of the Pharisees being whitewashed tombs. And they're all - many of them are above ground and were in Jesus' day as well.

Now, let's move from the Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, back across the Kidron, to the Temple Mount. This is looking from the Mount of Olives, or from above the Mount of Olives actually. This is an aerial, but you get the idea. We're up above the Mount of Olives, looking down at the Kidron Valley below. Running down here is the Kidron. And this whole box that you see along here, is the Temple Mount. And sitting dead in the middle of it, is the Dome of the Rock. There you see a view of the Temple Mount from the south. You can see that it's in the shape of a trapezoid. It's not a perfect rectangle or square. It's a trapezoid. And it's about 36 acres in size. So, don't think small. It's huge! 36 acres. Herod doubled the size of what Solomon had done for a temple mount, so he could accommodate the large crowds that came for the three annual feasts. While no remains of Herod's temple exist today, much of the retaining wall that he built still exists. So, if you were to go down beneath these walls you see here on the side, if you go down beneath the Turkish walls and the Islamic walls, you eventually get down to stones that Herod actually laid. At the bottom of those walls, you can see them to this day, are original stones that Herod laid. The entire wall he didn't build, but this is much what it would have looked like because these walls were built on top of the remnants of the walls Herod built. And so, it would have been roughly in the same shape. It marks the space.

Now, the Dome of the Rock that sits there today was built after the Muslim invaders took Jerusalem and Israel in 638 AD. So, some 1400 years ago, the Dome of the Rock was finished. And it has stood there for 1400 years. It is one of Islam's most sacred sites. The founding inscription on the Dome of the Rock reads this: "O you People of the Book, overstep not bounds in your religion, and of God speak only the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is only an apostle of God, and his Word which he conveyed unto Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from him. Believe therefore in God and his apostles, and say not Three. It will be better for you. God is only one God. Far be it from his glory that he should have a son." That is the inscription on the Dome of the Rock, the founding inscription. There is one God, and He has no son. This is an affront to our God. This is the most photographed building in all of Israel, but understand this, it is a pagan, idolatrous shrine standing in the very spot where the Holy of Holies used to stand. And, someday, it will change.

This is what the Temple Mount would have looked like in Jesus' day. Today. Jesus' day. The temple building proper, there in the middle, would have been almost twice as large as the Dome of the Rock is today. It was a massive building. The temple proper is what you see built in the center of that great area, right dead in the center of my picture here. And the Temple Mount, you hear me keep describing, was that artificial platform that Herod built. It's that entire flat area you see there encased by those walls. Looks like an upside-down shoebox over a hill. That's the Temple Mount. And that's massive - 36 acres at the top. And the temple stood 50 yards high - the structure you see in the middle, stood some 50 yards high. So, this is huge!

Now, this is on the southern end of the Temple Mount. These are original steps, many of them that you see here in the foreground. They're original steps believed that Jesus and His disciples would have taken up into the temple. And if you look where the crusader walls and the later walls have joined here, you can see what remains of the original doorway or passageway that they would have taken in Jesus' time up to the Temple Mount - the double gate, as it was called. Down below that same area, there on the southern end, there were shops in Jesus' time, arched shops. They were destroyed by the fire the Romans built in 70 AD to destroy the city. And some of those shops included a lot of wooden material. And you can see the outline on the edge of the rock there, from 70 AD, how they were scorched by the fires that were set - the outline of the arches that were there.

Also, on that southern main entrance end, they found a lot of mikvahs. Those are ritual baths that you had to cleanse yourself before you could worship. This is a really large one that you can go down on all four sides, probably built to accommodate all the pilgrims that were coming for the feasts. Many of them would need to use these. They've found many of them here on the southern end of the temple.

Now, when we talk about that Temple Mount, you'll see that the black box here points to an area called the Western Wall or, as it was called in the past, the Wailing Wall. It's really not called that anymore. It's the Western Wall. And you can see that section where people have gathered. It's part of the retaining wall that Herod built. The temple would have been up on top where the Dome of the Rock is in this picture. And this is merely part of the retaining wall to hold that artificial hill. It was a holy place because once the temple was destroyed, Jews were no longer allowed access up onto the Temple Mount. Now, the Muslims control the Temple Mount where the Dome of the Rock is. So, it became this retaining wall, became the holiest place in Judaism because it was the closest the Jews could get to the Holy of Holies.

By the way, there's now a holier place. We went down underneath, in the tunnels, and there's a place where you can get even closer. And now, it's marked down there, and some Jewish people are allowed to go down and pray, sitting there by that sacred spot.

By the way, this Western Wall has been venerated by the Jews since the 13th century, at least. At the very bottom, those huge stones... You see small stones up top. Those are more recent. Then you see some other stones. But the huge stones you see down beneath are original stones put there and placed there by Herod. And if you go down in the tunnels, as we did, there is another 52 feet down of the walls Herod built. There's been discussion along the way about the Jewish people exposing the rest of that and making a grand plaza. But that seems to always be put off. So, the wall that Herod built goes down much farther than you can see there.

Here they are praying at the Western Wall. Charlie got this great shot of soldiers and a Hasidic Jew, both praying, writing prayers, stuffing them in the walls. You can see the pictures of the paper stuffed in the wall there, as they leave the prayers. Those are stones from the original retaining wall of the temple that Herod built. They still use phylacteries, by the way. You remember in the New Testament it talks about the Pharisees and their phylacteries? They took the command literally that you are to bind the law of God near your heart and between your eyes. You remember Deuteronomy 6? And so, they filled those little boxes that they're strapping on - one over on the left arm, near the heart (right here), and one upon, between the eyes (on the forehead). And then they go to the Western Wall, and they pray. These are the phylacteries that you read about that the Pharisees made really big, so everybody knew just how much they really love God's law.

You go down underneath the Western Wall, and this is what it looks like. By the way, that is the largest stone they have found. That stone that's there in front of you, is the size of a railroad boxcar. They've estimated that it weighs 570 tons. Just to give you a point of comparison, Todd Bolen mentions that the largest stone in the great pyramid weighs 11 tons. This one weighs 570 tons. The stones were cut and fitted together on site. There was a quarry nearby. They were put together without mortar, but they're so well cut that in places you can't even get a razor blade between them. It's really incredible the building of this structure. You wonder, how did they get these stones here - not the largest stones but the smaller stones? This is a reconstruction of one idea that they actually built a wooden wheel around the stone, and they would hook a pulley system to it so that an animal could pull it as one massive cart and bring it from the quarries to the temple construction.

Now, couple of other points of interest here, that I want to point out to you. Inside the old city of Jerusalem today, you can see the wall of Hezekiah. This is the wall that he built in his time, in 700 BC, before the invasion by Sennacherib. And just as the Scriptures describe, it cuts through some houses, as Isaiah 22 describes.

These are the pools of Bethesda where Jesus healed, you remember. And a couple of pictures of that - one deeper pool, one shallower pool. Remember they were trying to get in and be healed.

Here is an old city street inside the more - the crusader, medieval types, parts of the city - just to give you an idea of what it's like to walk down through the various parts of the old city. And here it is, crowded, which it often is.

Now, I want to look at Jerusalem in the time of Jesus, because I think this will help you. And we're going to do that by help of a model. Let me just go on to the model. Here is... No, let me go back and show you this. This is an overview of what it was like. There you see the Temple Mount, that you've seen. There's the lower city. This was the City of David. This is where the walls would have run in Jesus' time, around this area. This was called the Upper City. I'm going to show you that in a moment. And then, where the red dot is, would have been outside the wall in Jesus' day and that's the most likely spot, right there, of His crucifixion and burial. This would have been the suburbs, outside the city wall, at Jesus' time.

Now, with that in mind, let me take you to a model of the city in Jesus' time. I think you can see the... Let me just kind of walk you around, starting on the right-hand side of this slide. You see the City of David, which I showed you earlier - that little portion of the hill there that comes down. That was the city in David's time that he took. Right above it, you see the Temple Mount where the temple structure was. And then the fortress, Antonia, which I'll come back to in a moment. That was a Roman structure to keep peace in the city. Golgotha would have been up over there on that side, the north side, and I'll show you from a different angle in a moment.

And then, the red roofs represent what was called the Upper City. This is where the wealthy people lived. Remember that other hill? The Western Hill? Real estate was the same in Jesus' day as it is in ours. The wealthier people wanted the hills. They wanted to be up. And that was true here as well. This is where many of the priests lived, including probably Caiaphas and Annas. And so, when Jesus is taken to their house, it would have been up in this red-roofed area of the city.

The lower city was where the poorer people lived. This will give you a little idea of what that upper area of the city looks like. We're looking - you can see the Temple Mount, just we've changed positions now. We're looking from the west. There's the Temple Mount - one end of it. Here are those red-roof buildings we were looking at.

And in the middle of that, on this side, you see Herod's palace. They found the remains of the platform which was Herod's palace. It's very likely this is where Jesus was brought, you remember, when he saw Pilate and Herod. It's likely that when Pilate and Herod were in town, not up in Caesarea (on the coast where we looked at last time, which was where the Romans really stayed most of the time), but when they came down into Jerusalem, it's very likely they stayed in this place. That explains why there was such a short time between their seeing Jesus. It wasn't like they were taking Him across the city. Here's another view of Herod's, the model of Herod's palace and the reconstruction. By the way, this model is built on the very latest archaeological finds, and they update it constantly so that you get a feel for what everything was really like in the time of Christ.

This is what a typical house, a wealthy house in Jerusalem, was like in the time of Christ. And you see it had courtyards inside of it where all of the living took place, and you were not exposed to the outside world.

I mentioned the City of David earlier. There's the Temple Mount and on the south side of that, is the area where David had his city in his time. Another picture of it there from the south. And that's what it looks like reconstructed up close. This is what it would've appeared in Jesus' time to be. Wealthy palaces - it was another one of those wonderful places you wanted to live because of its history.

Now, just real briefly, this is the south end of the Temple Mount. We're looking at that box that Herod created. And there's the temple sticking up above it. This is called Robinson's Arch. It was another entrance into the temple. And on the other side of it, you see that red triangle I put there. That's the section of wall called the Western Wall. That's the portion where they go and mourn today. So, that gives you some idea of how it was related to the temple in Jesus' day.

This is a photo, by the way, of what's left of Robinson's Arch. You can see it there, right in the middle of the photo. And beneath that arch, is a first century street. This is the street from Jesus' time that ran right below that area they've excavated. It gives you some idea of how the city would have looked. There would have been shops along this wall, little arched shops, and you walked along the street.

A very fascinating stone was found at that corner of the ruins. The end of the inscription was broken off, but it reads, "To the place of trumpeting". It was apparently up on the very top of the temple and, when it was destroyed, it fell immediately down. And on that corner, Josephus tells us the priest would stand on the top of the Temple Mount and blow a trumpet to usher in the Sabbath. So, apparently, this stone... And here's a closer view of what the inscription says. It says, "To the place of trumpeting". You can see on this larger photo that there was a little place down there where the priest would stand. This is a large stone. He would stand down here and he would blow the trumpet from that corner of - across the city, to let the people know the Sabbath was beginning and they needed to respect that. The original is at the Israel museum. That's just a copy.

Now we're back from photos, back to our model again. This is the south entrance, the main entrance, into the temple in Jesus' day. Those steps - I pointed out earlier that wall where the gate was - those steps that I showed you were steps Jesus would have ascended into the temple. They are these steps. You would have gone up, and you would have gone up inside a passageway, and you would have... This is another view of those steps (different angle) going up into the Temple Mount. You would have gone up and come out right here. You would have come out through the porticos, there, onto the Temple Mount. You see these holes in the floor? Those are the steps leading up from outside. And you would have walked out, and right in front of you, would have been that massive structure, 50 yards high. Just to give you some perspective, I put a little red stand in there to give you what a 5 1/2-foot person would look like standing in that area. It's huge!

And there's the temple proper - itself. By the way, you see this little wall? We talked about the dividing wall. That's the dividing wall - a 3-to-5-foot wall past which the Gentiles could not go. This large open area is the court of the Gentiles, on both sides. And then the Jews could go into the temple itself. And this is what it looked like looking inside. Remember, this is some 50 yards high. So, it's a massive building.

This is the court of the women. And if the men could go into the court of Israel, in this area, and that's where, outside the building, is where the altar stood, where the sacrifices were made. And inside the doors, only the priests went into the Holy Place and the High Priest into the Holy of Holies once a year. There's another view of that beautiful building. There, you can see the stone, the wall, a little better, the dividing wall that kept the Gentiles out.

On the other side of the Temple Mount was the fortress, Antonia. You can see that structure there. The Romans soldiers stayed there, and they had access immediately onto the temple complex if anything happened. If things got out of hand with those massive crowds gathering, they had immediate access. You remember, they did that. They came out of the fortress Antonia in Paul's day and rescued him when the riot was breaking out there in the temple. Here's the fortress Antonia from a little different view. And behind it, there, you can see the Pools of Bethesda - that red-roofed area over on the other side. That's what Pools of Bethesda looked like in Jesus' day. Here's another picture of them, where Jesus healed the man.

Now, I want to go and show you one other thing. Just to reorient you, we're now looking from the west toward the Temple Mount. There's the Temple Mount. You see the red arrow. That's the Western Wall again, where the sacred place for the Jews today. Over here is the fortress, Antonia. Now, let me home in on that because you see in this larger picture. Here's the Temple Mount. Here's the fortress Antonia. This area is where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is today. It is almost certainly the site of Jesus' crucifixion and His burial. There's a closeup of it. There you see the fortress, Antonia. In Jesus' day it would have been just outside the city walls. You see that? The wall that existed? It would have been near a road. There was a quarry in Jesus' day. They found evidence that stones were quarried there to build these various buildings in town. And so, there were outcroppings of rock. And this is probably the place where Jesus was killed. He would have come from the upper city, you remember. Over at Caiaphas and Annas' house? He would have been tortured, probably here in the fortress, Antonia, and brought outside the city, just outside the city wall. This is what stands in that place today, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

There's another picture of it. You go inside and it is a gaudy place. It is fought over by the various religions. The Muslims hold the keys to this church but allow Christians to worship there. And it is not a place that brings anything to mind about the crucifixion of Christ. But very likely - remember what I told you last week? There are some sites that are certainly not the original sites, there's some that may be, and there are others that probably are. Where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher stands, that model I just showed you a moment ago, almost certainly is where our Lord was crucified and buried. The tradition goes back all the way as far as we can go back in history. And so, it's almost certainly the spot. You see the rock outcroppings that are still there and preserved in that area. Also, in the middle of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, is this edifice. And it is a place marking the tomb of Christ. One archaeologist maintains that much of the tomb... He did a lot of study. Much of the tomb remains beneath this edifice that's built in the middle of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, even up to six feet or more in height, down below this, still stands intact. The church historian, Eusebius, identified this one as the one belonging to Jesus, probably because he found identifying marks from the earliest Christians. You can imagine that that place was marked by Christians and visited by Christians from the very beginning of the history of the church. And so...

It's also interesting that in this side, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there are other first century tombs. Here is one. It was definitely outside the walls during the first half of the first century. It was an old shut down quarry. And it was about 100 years before Christ, it was filled in and made a garden - this area. It was a quarry before that and then, until the first century BC, when it became a garden. So, it most likely is the site. This, by the way, is inside that other first century tomb. This is what the tombs in Jesus' time would have looked like.

You can't really get much of a picture of the tomb of Jesus from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It's an ugly, gaudy, dark place. And so, typically, those who visit Israel end their visit at the Garden Tomb. This is almost certainly not the place where Jesus was buried, but it gives you a little more of a picture of what that other place would have looked like in the first century. Our Lord lived and ministered and died. Our God chose to set His name on this place.

You remember the Mount of Olives I showed you earlier? The Mount of Olives was the site from which the ascension took place. Jesus walked out with His disciples outside of the city, and, from the Mount of Olives, He ascended into heaven. And the angel said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky [gazing up into heaven]? This [same] Jesus ... will come in just the same way [like manner] as you have watched [seen] Him go..." Or as the prophet Zechariah put it, "In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south." God is going to rearrange the geography of the land when Christ comes back to claim what is His.

I hope, as you've seen these photos, you have a little more of a glimpse of what the land looks like. And when you read the Scripture, realize that those are real events that took place in real places; and that our Lord was a real person who lived, and died, and was raised from the dead, and is coming again.

Let's pray together.

Our Father, we have hurried our way through the land of Israel, but we thank You for what we've seen. We thank You for driving home to us the reality of the historicity of these events and of our Lord. Father, it's so easy for people who live in America, so distant from the events of the Bible, both in time and space, to imagine them to be pretend, to imagine them to be myth or legend. And yet, Father, we thank You that the place still exists, the place where You chose to put Your address, and where You will yet again. Father, we thank You that You are faithful. You are faithful to Your people. But more than that, You are faithful to Your Son, and You have promised Him the nations for His inheritance. You promised that He will sit on the throne of His father David, and He will reign. Lord, until that day, keep our hearts tender toward Him. May He reign and rule in our hearts. May He be our Lord and we His slaves until He comes. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen!