Jan 3, 2020 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
So it is so hard to pick favorites…again, this is up there for me because I did an entire, lengthy Beth Moore Bible study on this next one. We went back out of the Dung Gate, and walked around the southwest corner of the temple.
We went to the south side/wall of the Temple Mount, and found the stairs that the Jews would have used to enter the temple on occasions such as Passover etc. The feasts, the times when Jews were called to come to Jerusalem. As they entered the Temple, they would have prayed on each step the Psalms of Ascent. Each of 15 steps for the 15 Psalms (Ps 120-135, as memory serves). The southern gate was blocked and a wall built by the Turks kind splits where the gate was, but this is where Jesus would have taught…men and women. This is where Mary and Joseph would have brought him the first time to see Simeon and be circumcised. This is where the apostles would have taught the people too. These steps.
(Top left is the gate blocked and half covered with a wall). Here’s a closeup of that part…
I mean in.cred.i.ble. I love this spot. Again, a place where I could have spent a long time reflecting and praying. 
Here is a pic of the WW again from higher up. Men on the left/top, women on the right/bottom. When we left the Southern Gate, we went up a huge ramp to get up to the upper courtyard and the Dome of the Rock, which has been claimed by the Muslims. There is a mosque up there from the era of the Crusades, and then also the place where the Southern Gate would have allowed people to emerge onto the open courtyard area. Next up, some pictures of the Dome of the Rock.
Jan 3, 2020 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
So I redid the Tour Life Day 5 post and added the rest of the Day 5 stuff, so make sure you go back and read that one! : )
We got up very early in the morning to see some things before the crowds got bad, and OHHHH was it worth it. Mike is the MAN…he knows his stuff. Shout out to the Dan Panorama too, they opened 15 minutes early for breakfast just for us too. So we head over to the Dung Gate and walk up to the security checkpoint with all the guards with the big guns. We can’t take laptops or iPads into the Temple area, but phones and cameras were ok. We were the only ones in line so essentially walked right through the checkpoint and on we went. We walked past the Western/Wailing Wall (which I will refer to as WW) and instead went straight for the tunnel tour. 
This is really one amazing tour. One of our group members said “Vacations always have something that’s a dud…there have been ZERO duds.” She was right, everything is so neat, you wonder if anything could ever top it, and then, it does! Each stop is so incredible. This was really cool.
There are still tons of excavations and archeological digs going on all over the place on the Temple Mount. There is now a tunnel down below the surface along the length of the WW. We walked, underground in this tunnel from the WW to the northwest corner of the temple, to a cistern under where the Antonio Fortress was. Check this out.
Here’s Mike pointing down the tunnel, you can’t remotely see it all.
Here’s the cistern. 
Still has rain water in it today from the housing above. There are 2000 yr old steps down to it. Whoa. Speaking of 2000 yr old stuff, on the way to this spot, we also got to see a master stone weighing some 600 tons that Solomon and his workers moved into place to support the temple. How did they do that, you ask? Dunno. The thing is HUGE. Here’s like half of it.
And there were more people lined up like this on the other half. This is a Solomon-aged stone. It’s absolutely incredible.
Here’s the other half. Guessing they needed these holes in it to move it. That is up there on the list of the most AWESOME things I’ve ever seen.
Evan had to do quite a bit of ducking…me too. There were some narrow spots and not a fun place for claustrophobics. Then we resurfaced, and went to see the WW that is above ground.
It wasn’t overly crowded, and the side for the women had been enlarged from previous years, they said. I didn’t take pictures close, disrespectful, but I can say that it was emotionally powerful to be there. For me, the big takeaway, and this has been for me at multiple places, is that I am not alone. There are God-fearing Christians all over the place. We have been around groups of Christians from Russia, Nigeria, Japan, China, European countries, Singapore (tell you more about that tomorrow), not counting all the folks that live here in Israel. Like in the church at the Shepherd’s Field…the familiar tune for us that the folks were singing in Latin. Then our song in English speaking to the people that came in after us. It’s so humbling and I feel the universal love of God in the faces of all the cultures here who love Him, and all the remnants of the cultures here who loved Him when they were alive, too. That is what brings me to tears every time I feel it or think about it, including now.
If there is such a thing as prime real estate for pigeons, the WW would be it. What an amazing feel to this place. So many people praying. Next we went to the south side of the Temple Mount.
Jan 2, 2020 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
Tonight is our meal with the family in Bethlehem. We won’t get back until around 8:30PM local time. Today we had almost 10.000 steps in before lunch, and I have caught the cough that has been going through the bus. I cannot promise I will blog tonight, as there was SOOOO much we saw today, and I may need to go directly to bed when we get back. Not sure. I took over 400 pictures and over 50 videos, if that is any indication of the cool stuff we saw today!!! I promise to blog as soon as I am physically able!
NEXT DAY!
I’m back! I can’t say that I feel a lot better, in fact probably the other way around, but…thanks to some friends that were willing to share some DayQuil/NyQuil, I’m doing OK, and I have a little time yet to blog before I feel like I absolutely need to sleep. So! Backing up to yesterday for me…I’ll see how many of these I can crank out before I pass out!
Let’s start by talking about the beautiful weather we have been having! Thank you Lord, we have had absolutely STELLAR weather. Most days are really cool, cool enough for us to wear pants and longs sleeves, as many sites require. We have still only been sprinkled on once before we went on the boat ride on the Sea of Galilee, otherwise we have stayed dry. This is the sunset for Day 5, taken from Mount Zion.
One thing that I thought was kinda interesting…folks in Israel put their water heaters on the roof to save energy costs and paint them black to help the sun warm the water. I like it, great idea!
We had cheese pizza for dinner, in a restaurant near the US Embassy. I can honestly say, I would prefer Totinos that mom used to get us when I was a kid. The cheese was non-existent almost. It wasn’t good. The Schnitzel in a pita with French fries is still our favorite.
We got to shop today again in the store of one of Mike’s friends. I swear Mike knows half of the people in this country. Anyway, this shop is licensed to deal in real antiquities, and they have lamps from the first century like the 10 virgins would have carried. Really brings meaning to that story. You can have your own too, if you’d like, for around $500 on the low end. The antiques in this picture are real, and from the time of Jesus. So cool.
They also sold olive wood carvings and this one is easily one of my very favorites. A replica in olive wood of Solomon’s Temple. Wow, was that neat. I dealt with a little old man named George who called himself King George, so I naturally introduced myself as Queen Nancy. Yep, we liked each other right off. 
Here is another temple replica made out of metal near the Dung Gate where we entered the Temple Mount near the western/wailing wall, also very cool. More about where else we went later.
Here is a pic of how they would move stones easily over distances when building the temple…put them in wooden wheels and roll them around. Brilliant! I realize this is a little haphazard with the story telling, but I’m trying to share the cool, yet otherwise unrelated to a specific place, pictures.
There’s the Dung Gate pic.
And lastly, there is the pic of the front of the hotel we are staying at for 4 days in Jerusalem. Very nice place, good food, helpful staff. Really nice.
OK, next we need to do a few stops on Day 5, so let’s start with very early in the morning, wake up call at 5:45AM to beat the crowds in the Temple area. Well worth it…let’s start with the tunnels along the western wall of the old temple, since that’s what we did first.
Jan 1, 2020 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
Our day today ended with a short swim in the Dead Sea. Evan and I both opted to not get all the way in, but got wet up to our knees. The water was cool, but not freezing, and felt like baby oil on the skin. People were walking around slathered with mud, which one would pay a fortune for at a spa. People were floating with ease and one gal from our group described feeling like Iron Man flying…”standing” where they couldn’t reach. The shore was very funky-looking…check this out:
And the bottom was slippery mud, everyone had to be really careful getting in and out or pay the price by ending up on their rear ends.
A good time was had by all. An interesting experience!
OK, that’s it for today. Tomorrow is a HUGE day, the Garden of Gethsemane, Mount of Olives, the tunnel (?), the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock if we can get up there, and the small group meals with the families in Bethlehem. We will be hoofing it!! Should have all kinds of things to say tomorrow. For now, best get a good night’s rest because our wake-up call is 5:45AM. Yikes. That’s 8.5 hours from now, more sleep than I’ve gotten since the first night, so should be good. Good night all, thanks for reading!
Jan 1, 2020 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
Qumran is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 by a shepherd boy who was originally from Bethlehem. Fitting! The scrolls were scriptures on scrolls that were remarkably close to the translations of Bible we already had, but just older. Mike said that the residents who lived in the area right after the time of Jesus were likely Assines, a sect like the Pharisees and Saducees that were very into clean living, celibacy, and worship. Sounds kinda like monks to me. Anyway, they lived in this area to get away from Jerusalem which they believed had become so corrupt before 100AD, to worship with peace and quiet. This group called themselves “the sons of light” and the Romans “the sons of darkness.” Of all the places we’ve seen yet, such a high concentration of ritual baths. It’s like these guys were obsessed with the ritual baths and cleanliness, there were several. They were deep, and with steps, like this:
They’re probably 10-12 feet deep easy. There are 11 caves in this area, and the scrolls were found in cave 6
And here’s one of us for good measure.
Never has this kid been so willing to be photographed. I’m taking advantage of it!
Last stop, the Dead Sea.
Jan 1, 2020 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
Masada is the location of the Dead Sea fortress built by Herod the Great around the time of Jesus, the first century, when he ruled up until 4 AD. What slays me is that this entire place was built for Herod to have a place to hide if the Romans or any other enemy got too frisky, and he was actually only there on site for a total of about 20 days. What the heck? I cannot imagine how many slaves died building the water system on the side of this mountain, for example, and just how huge the complex is and how much work it would have taken to build it in 14 years, but just wow. The scope of the project, the attention to detail, the ingenious design, and the main dude was only there for 20 days. It had a heated pool and sauna (that we didn’t get to see this trip) and tons of rooms and a three terraced mansion on the end. The “Snake Trail” to get up there was 2.5 miles straight up. Not this girl. Anyway, on with the pictures.
We rode a cable car to the top instead of taking the snake trail, thank you God, and it took a whopping 3 minutes. I have a video out of the front video on the ride down. It’s pretty incredible. They packed us in like sardines and pulled us straight up to the top. From there, we could look down and see the remnants of the Roman camps that were built to surround the fortress for 3 years as the Romans planned to take it down.
Oh ya, did I mention the gruesome end of Herod’s people in Masada? The Romans encamped around the mountain and walled it off for three years. In the meantime, built a ramp on the back side of the mountain to breach the fortress.
Here’s the breach point with the ramp they came up. When the Romans finally did reach the top of the fortress to take it by force, they found no one left alive inside. The people there knew their fate. They knew that the Romans would get in, and when they did, the men would be marched back to Jerusalem and crucified, and the women and children would become Roman slaves. So, they all off-ed themselves. Wow. That’s a heck of a story!
Here are the original steps up into the palace area, I always like to see the original stuff, not the fixed up with modern stuff versions. This black line represents where the restorers added on top of what was still standing, to delineate exactly how they found it.
There was a really cool water system that involved small canals carved into the side of the mountain to drain into cisterns. Here’s one such canal.
The other thing I thought that was really neat was the place of worship that had original tile in the floors and in the walls. Here are a few pics of that.
OK, that about does it for Masada. A great builder, Herod…other than that, a great mad man who killed a LOT of people, including his wife.
Next up, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
