Day 09 - Mount of Olives, Garden of Gethsemane

Day Nine: Friday November 19, 2022

I cannot believe that today is the last day of our trip.  It has been such an awesome journey through history, one that I will forever be changed because of.  There were some amazing places that we journeyed into today.

We began on the East side of the Temple Mount.  And entered the city through the Sheep Gate.  One of the most amazing things we learned this week was that everybody entered the Temple courts from the East and made their way closer to God in the West.  We began the day by going to another pool, one that contrasts the Pool of Siloam, called the Pool of Bethesda.  On our way were stopped by St Anne’s church, a place that proposes to be the birthplace of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  There we sang two different songs and could help but fight back the tears that seemed to be always on my face these past 9 days.

The pool of Bethesda story can be found in John chapter 5 and is an interesting contrast to the story of the blind man that defended Jesus in chapter 9.  The Bible is full of a whole bunch of stories that I have so much more appreciation for now that I have been to these sights and seen with my own eyes the places that these miracles took place.

We made our way to the Via Dolorosa and walked the path that Jesus walked with the cross on the way to Golgotha.  This was a sobering walk as we saw how narrow the roads were and how full of people it would have been as people were coming to the temple for Sabbath.  I didn’t put it together until after, but we walked through on Friday morning and saw how crowded the streets were.  I could only imagine the anguish of Jesus as he carried the cross through the crowded streets as people were coming into the city to pray and celebrate sabbath.  The road finally came to the place that Jesus would be crucified, where now sits a church named, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.    The church was beautiful and had a bunch of different places that you could see where they would have prepared the body for burial and where the tomb may have been.  The place was somber, even though all the places were much different in Biblical times and the tomb could not contain the risen Jesus. 

After the walk through the street of the temple, we next headed to Jerusalem Museum so we could see a scale representation of the city of Jerusalem in Biblical times and see the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It was amazing to see the city from all sides and imagine what it looked like when the Temple stood in the place of the Dome of the Rock.  It was equally amazing to see the pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls and read some of the most important history ever discovered in Israel’s history.  We were immediately in awe of all that was discovered in the cave we saw earlier in the tour and couldn’t help to wonder what will be found in the future.

The last two places that we went were two of my most impactful places on the tour, the Mt. of Olives, and the Garden of Gethsemane. The view from the Mt of Olives was breathtaking and I was in awe of what it might have been during Jesus’s time when He taught about what was to come and where Jesus lamented over the city of Jerusalem. Jesus spoke about what was to come and what is still coming (read Matthew 24). 

Our final stop on the Tour was in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus prayed to have the burden taken away from Him, but not for His will but God’ will to be done. It was humbling to think what would take place a couple of day after that prayer and one that I will not soon forget. In the book of John chapter 17, Jesus prayed for the things that would come, he prayed for his disciples, and he prayed for those who believed in him because of the message of the disciples, in other words He prayed for all of us. It was an emotional completion to all the places and puzzle pieces that we discovered on this journey and one that I will forever remember and appreciate even more as I continue to grow in my relationship with our Savior and Lord. I cannot express enough that if you have a chance to take this trip, don’t hesitate. Everybody who believes should see with their own eyes the places and experiences that we went to in this epic trip though all of Israel.