A Masterfully Designed Story

There aren’t many mornings when westerners can say they spent the morning on the Southern Steps of the Temple in Jerusalem reading about the prophecies of Christ and the Day of Pentecost. However, that’s exactly how we spent this morning in Jerusalem. Before we sat underneath the morning sun on the Southern Steps, we examined life at the Cardo, or the main street of the city, around the Temple.

As exciting as that was, the steps we took to get there were more significant than the steps on which we sat. In order to get to the Southern Steps of the Temple, we first entered Hezekiah’s Tunnel. This engineering marvel was a way for Jerusalem, a city with a limited internal water source, to reroute water from a nearby spring by aquaducts. The men that worked on this tunnel spent 15 years creating this passage. We marched through the tunnel in knee high (and sometimes waist high water) for several hundred meters to its end at the Pool of Siloam - the place where Jesus gave the blind man his sight. After we sat reading about the miracle, we again shadowed His presence from millenniums ago as we traveled the path of Jesus to get to the Temple area Cardo.

After several hours in the Temple area, we journeyed to a place that preceded Jerusalem - Bethlehem. We crossed into the Palestinian-ruled territory of Israel and rode through this sparse desert area until we reached a manmade mountain called Herodium. This was King Herod’s palace and most likely where he spent most of his time. It is also where he would have been during the time he gave the decree to kill the male children of Bethlehem. The fact that Herod could have stepped out of his palace to overlook Bethlehem gave new meaning to the threat posed to Christ and the provision and sovereignty of God’s plan.

The last stop of the day was the Church of Nativity, advertised to be the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem. This church, constructed in the fourth century, is a currently functioning church with mosaics, paintings, fine metals, and an area commemorating the possible birthplace of Christ. In the midst of this predominately Arab territory, it is ironic that the proposed birthplace of Christ is preserved by passion through a church serving Roman Catholic, Armenian, and Greek Orthodox parishioners just outside Jerusalem. Christ is indeed the universal Savior!

Although our trip is nearing an end, it is exciting to see the stories of God’s Word take shape in both testaments as commons threads extend throughout. Tomorrow is a big day as we will again visit several pivotal places in Jerusalem. It may be the biggest day yet!