Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, its off to St. Louis We Go!

It was nearly one year go when I led the Wilderness Activities Club (WAC) on a trip to St. Louis to see the City Museum and Elephant Rocks State Park, and what had been planned to be an awesome trip turned quickly to peril.  Now don’t get too concerned, no one got hurt, it was just scary for the guy leading the trip!  The entire trip went crazy when we started to leave campus and weather turned bad, but we pressed on.  Lo and behold, Saturday after the City Museum the weather was getting worse and a winter wonderland was coming quickly, we cut the trip short and began the, supposed to be 4 hour drive, 8 hour trek to Rolla.  Why Rolla you ask? Because of a 23 car pile up on 44.  My stress level was out the roof as I watched the other cars in my group fishtail and continue driving on the ice to try and get to safety.  Praise the Lord that a church came to our rescue and put us up in their youth room to rest and let the snow melt.  The next morning everything was fine and we trekked on home beautifully.  It was stressful and we did not get to go see everything we wanted to see as the WAC, but everyone was safe!

A year later and we are planning the same exact trip round 2, except this time we are learning from last years mistakes!  This year you can look forward to a nearly identical itinerary, City Museum on Saturday and Elephant Rocks on Sunday!  It will be a blast this year as we are planning on taking more people than we took last year and we also planned it a month later to avoid any more snow mishaps.  It will be a killer blast!

As you read this you may wonder to yourself “what is the City Museum?”  The answer to your question is simple: a giant play place for adults and kids that is incredibly built so you can climb, crawl, roll, laugh, slide, jump, and just play!  If you haven’t been, this trip is for you!  Your the reason we put this thing on and arrange it so cheap for you students! We leadership of the club simply want to provide these opportunities for students like you who might not get the chance to experience this crazy stuff!

So now get your calendar and make sure your available to join us August 8-10th and make sure you make it to our weekly meetings to catch all the details and more information!  Feel free to ask any leadership about it, it will be awesome!

SEE YOU AT THE CITY!!!

 

 

The Kingdom of God: The Message of the Bible

[This is a paper I wrote for Worldview I and I thought I would share it with you. The assignment was a 4-5 page paper on the message of the Bible using the whole story of Scripture. Enjoy, and I hope someone can learn from this.]

The Message

            The Bible is a magnificent book, full of great stories and many lessons to learn from, but is there one central theme throughout the Bible? Finding the theme of the Bible can be difficult, but can be done. Graeme Goldsworthy puts it best and describes the theme as; “The Kingdom of God: God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing.”[1] The entire Bible is teaching us about God’s Kingdom through His people in His place under His rule and blessing.

To look at this efficiently through the Bible as a whole, Vaughan Roberts’s method of Gods Kingdom will be followed. Roberts splits the Kingdom of God into 8 periods of God’s Kingdom[2] that he uses to describe God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing, which will be used to do the same here throughout this explanation.

The Pattern of the Kingdom

The Pattern of the Kingdom is God’s demonstration of Creation and how His kingdom should be, found in Genesis chapters 1-2.. This pattern is demonstrated in God creating everything perfectly and His dwelling with them. It is the perfect example of God’s people (Adam and Eve) in God’s place (the Garden) under God’s rule and experiencing His blessings (His communion with His created beings).

The Perished Kingdom

The Kingdom of God is very quickly disrupted when ‘the fall’ happens, and brings about the Perished Kingdom. The Perished Kingdom is when God’s Kingdom, for the first time, is wrecked because sin enters the world. This is in Genesis 3 where Satan, as a serpent, deceives Eve to disobey the one command that God had given them, convincing her she wanted become like God. Eve is quick to fall and eats the fruit and gets Adam to eat also, therefore bringing the fall of man and the Perished Kingdom. This sin has massive consequences when God has to judge the wrongdoing and give humans pain, suffering, death, and no longer the opportunity to dwell with God’s presence in the Garden because they are kicked out. In the Perished Kingdom God’s people are no longer in His place or under His rule and blessings, the whole Kingdom is flipped upside down, but, they are given hope. 

The Promised Kingdom

            Following the Perished Kingdom is the Promised Kingdom. God has to begin to re-establish His Kingdom somehow because He loves His creations. He promises this re-establishment through a man named Abraham. God sends Abraham to a land he is not from and promises Abraham with a covenant that God will re-establish His kingdom, through his offspring forever.  His promise is that Abraham’s descendants will be God’s people in God’s place under His rule , experiencing His blessing, and his descendants would bless everyone in the world.  This promise defines the Promised Kingdom and how it represents Gods Kingdom, but it would not be completely fulfilled until Jesus fully fulfills the Kingdom.

The Partial Kingdom

God promises fulfilment through Abraham and then He begins the fulfilling process leading into the Partial Kingdom. The Partial Kingdom is a big chunk of Israel’s history going from Abraham to Solomon, Genesis 18-2 Chronicles. In this time God begins to grow the descendant of Abraham from Isaac to the twelve tribes of Jacob (or Israel), to Moses, to David, and then Solomon’s kingship. The nation of Israel grows from 1 man to one of the greatest nations of the time during Solomon.

 God gathers Abrahams descendant Jacob and his twelve sons and creates the nation of Israel through the twelve tribe,s who grow into a mighty nation as slaves in Egypt. This is only partially fulfilling the Kingdom because they are not in God’s land. God uses Moses, an Israelite, to save the entire nation of Israel from Egyptian rule. Moses and the nation head into the wilderness for 40 years, where they are given God’s rule and blessings through the Ten Commandments at Sinai and through the Mosaic Covenant. They now have God’s rule and blessing, but not His place. Moses dies and God chooses Joshua to take over for the nation.

Joshua leads the nation into the land the Lord had chosen for them. They were going in to heap judgment upon the nations there, and to receive the land for themselves; but they disobey and don’t kill (judge) all the nations and this brings curses on Israel as the other nations drag them into idolatry over and over again, taking them from God’s rule. 

The Israelites fall into the time of the Judges where Judges rule Israel and the nation falls deeper and deeper into idolatry until they request a king, who will be Saul, followed by David then Solomon. David is considered ‘a man after God’s own heart’ because his love for the Lord, and his desire to follow the Lord. God established another covenant with David; that David would always have a descendant seated upon the throne of Israel and that he would have a descendant forever seated upon the throne, Jesus, who will be the fulfilment of the Kingdom. 

Solomon, David’s son, had wisdom and riches beyond fathom, but he was an adulterous and had many wives of other nations, leading the nation into civil war. The nation split into Judah and Israel ending the Partial Kingdom where God’s people where in God’s place and half way experiencing His rule and blessing. This begins the Prophesied Kingdom.

The Prophesied Kingdom

            The Prophesied Kingdom is a period where Israel is a split nation and the nation is scattered, due to exiles of different nations. This was known as the Prophesied Kingdom, because God spoke to the people through Prophets warning them of judgment and of the Savior to come permanently forgive them of their sin and offer a new covenant. This time period was a huge decline for the nation of Israel taking it from God’s people in God’s place under His rule and blessing, to almost no nation, scattered. It ends with a few Jews in Jerusalem and a small temple, but they felt as though they were still slaves, not under God’s rule and blessing. Then God allows 400 years of silence where there are no prophets, or necessarily even a Kingdom.

The Present Kingdom

            The end of 400 years comes with John the Baptist, prophesying that the Messiah is coming, and He indeed does come. The Present Kingdom is when Jesus was present on earth, bringing about His Kingdom. Jesus comes as the fulfilment of God’s people, place, and to bring about a new way of His rule and blessing. Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s people as the true Adam, by being the only man to ever not deserve death as God had planned it with Adam, and as the true Israel, by deliberately choosing twelve disciples and bringing a new Israel about.  Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s place as the true Tabernacle and the true Temple that Jesus Himself would raise (seen in John 2:19[3]). Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s rule and blessing when He brings the New Covenant with His death and resurrection for our sins, His new Kingship, and through Him one experiences God’s full blessing.[4] But Jesus talks of His Kingdom still to come, therefore there is more to come before the full Kingdom.

The Proclaimed Kingdom

            Following the resurrection, Jesus gives one last great commission in Matthew 28:19-20; “go therefore and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”  After Jesus ascends the Apostles literally scatter across the known world sharing the message of Christ. This is the Proclaimed Kingdom, where God’s people are proclaiming His message throughout the whole world. It brings about a new view of God’s Kingdom; His people are everyone who believes in Him, His place is inside the individual, and His rule and blessing is through the New Covenant. The Proclaimed Kingdom is still active today, until all people have heard the message of Jesus and He comes back bringing the Perfected Kingdom.

The Perfected Kingdom

            During the Proclaimed Kingdom, the apostle John is banished to an island and receives a vision that he transcribes that describes the Perfect Kingdom that will come when Jesus comes again. The Perfect Kingdom will be ALL the believers as God’s people, in New Jerusalem as God’s Place, and under God’s complete and whole blessing as in the Garden, without sin. The Perfected Kingdom will be perfectly perfect, basking in the Presence of The Lord.

The Message

            The Bible is far more than a book of small messages it has one central theme. We can miss this if we view it that way, as Lesslie Newbigin stated, “even in our readings of the Bible in church, we tend to look at only very short passages which reinforces the impression that the Bible is a collection of nuggets of wisdom from which we can choose what we find helpful… it is not.”[5]  The message of the Bible is seeing His Kingdom through every page, His Kingdom being God’s people in God’s place under Gods rule and blessing.[6] This is what the Bible is teaching about God through every page of the entire Bible.

 

 

 

[1] Goldsworthy Graeme, The Gospel and Kingdom (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 2012), 47.

[2] Roberts, God’s Big Picture, 22.

[3] Kostenberger Andreas J., ESV Study Bible Notes and Commentaries (Wheaton: Crossway Publishing:2008), 2024.

[4] Roberts, God’s Big Picture, 109-114.

[5] Newbigin, Lesslie, A Walk Through the Bible (Vancouver: Regent Publishing, 2005), 12.

[6] Goldsworthy, The Gospel and Kingdom, 47.

 

 

Bibliography

Alexander, T. Desmond. From Eden to the New Jerusalem: An Introduction to Biblical Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic & Professional, 2009. Print.

ESV Study Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008. Print. Study Notes and Commentaries.

Goldsworthy, Graeme. Gospel and Kingdom: A Christian Interpretation of the Old Testament. Exeter: Paternoster, 2012. Print.

Newbigin, Lesslie. A Walk through the Bible. Vancouver Canada: Regent, 2005. Print.

Roberts, Vaughan. God’s Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002. Print

Passing G.a.s. In College

It was finally here… a moment I have been waiting for for over 2 years now, but before then I never thought would ever happen.  The Lord had blessed me tremendously beyond what I deserve and I had no idea what to expect as I walked on to College Of The Ozarks campus 2 weeks ago for the last time as a prospective student, and the first time as a student.  It was time for Character Camp (Freshman Orientation week on way too many Pixie Stix).  As the week went on I began to notice that there was a lot of G.a.s. at school, even at a Christian College.  Now I knew not to expect it to be perfect nor everyone to even be believers but upon arriving and beginning to chat with the incoming class (there was only 80 of us) I saw a lot of good fruit from so many of my fellow classmates but I just began to start smelling the G.a.s. so bad.  I felt as if I was back in the stench of high school, and what made it worse was that either no one thought it was wrong, and/or no one was willing to speak up and ask people to stop passing G.a.s..  It was looking as if passing G.a.s. was socially acceptable in college and I was not ok with it, it is wrong!  It was at lunch today that I really decided I needed to speak up and say something… the whole table was just letting it loose!  It was so bad one of the Café workers noticed while she was vacuuming, and I am happy to say she spoke up and said something about it right before I did, I knew someone else cared.  So I took the opportunity and I spoke up against it too… well it didn’t go to well.  Immediately the whole table became defensive and claimed they were not passing G.a.s.. I have only been in College 2 weeks but I can already tell passing G.a.s. is going to a pretty hard thing to try and stay out of… and to help others stay out of…

 

G.a.s.

Capital (G)

 

 

Lowercase (a)

 

 

Lowercase (s)

 

 

Gossip and slander.

 

 

*The acronym G.a.s. is taken from a mentor mine, it is not my original idea.

 

 

In 2 weeks of college I have noticed more gossip and slander than I have noticed in the past 2 years waiting for school!  This is a problem.  If you are not a Christian then you do not need to continue reading and I hope you got some comedy out of my story, but if you are a Christian then keep reading and I pray that you accept my encouragement as I sharpen you with the Word of God as Proverbs 27:17 says and that you continue to grow closer to Jesus Christ as you become more aware of the G.a.s. you pass or the G.a.s. you see and hear (and maybe smell, but lets pretend those moments don’t happen.)

 

 

Gossip is capitalized because gossip is a part of slander and most of the time gossip leads right into slander and they both are sin, and as I have seen a sin that most people deem “ok” but it is not.  I pray that with this knowledge you would take responsibility to stop passing G.a.s. and helps other stop.  This is for me too, I am not faultless in this at all but nonetheless the Word of God is pretty clear that gossip and slander is sin:

Proverbs 20:19 “Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets; therefore do not associate with a simple babbler.”

Proverbs 6:16-19 “There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.”

Titus 3:2 “To speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.”

Exodus 23:1 “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness.”

Luke 6:3 “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”

Psalm 34:13 “Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.”

James 4:11 “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.”

Psalm 101:5 “Whoever slanders his neighbor secretly I will destroy. Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not endure.”

And the list goes way on but there was just a couple so you know I am not making this stuff up.

High school student or my friends who are getting ready for college, start now.  Stop gossiping now and start helping your friends to stop also so that when it comes time to hit college you are ready to stand up for the people being gossiped or slandered but more importantly stand up for The Word of God and you help your fellow believers.

College students, I pray the Spirit is stirring in you to make a change if your own heart to not gossip and to help your fellow brothers and sisters in school to stop gossiping too.  Change your campus, especially if it’s a Christian campus.  Make your school a safer environment for people, G.a.s. hurts people and is just dumb.

We are ambassadors of Christ!  We are called to act as He would act, speak as He would speak, treat others as He would treat others, be as He would be if He was here in the flesh, because He is here in the flesh of your life!

In fact it could go deeper than G.a.s., what if we all just lived by Ephesians 4:29?

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

Can you imagine if we went past gossip and slander?  Could you imagine if we all strived to live according to Ephesians 4:29?  Even if we all just tried to live by this, we are not perfect, but picture what it would be like if we never spoke anything about anyone that was not uplifting? But only spoke that which was fit for building them up so that they may have grace and so may all that hear it!  That would just be beautiful!  It would even smell way better than G.a.s.!  It may seem impossible, but so did making electric currents flow through a wire hot enough to create light but 1 man decided to change that and now he affected the entire world!  It starts with you!  Go and live the motto of Ephesians 4:29!  Give yourself reminders, write 4:29 on your bracelet, place it on your hat, or shirt, or anything but most importantly put it in your heart!  Live by it and we can change the way people talk about each other, or even themselves!

Let us all begin to put an end to all G.a.s.

Sincerely,

A smelly college student trying to spread the cure to G.a.s. and become fresh himself.

Day 10: Scrolls That Are Dead? Oh You Mean Dead Sea Scrolls!

Wow today was a long last day! We stayed around Jerusalem and hit up a lot of Jesus sites! This will be kinda short today due to I have got a lot of stuff to do in a short time.
We began our adventure today at the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is a really cool historical and futuristic site. Jesus would stopped here before His triumphal entry and went through the Passover road that would have passed through here. It is also in the relative area where Jesus ascended into heaven. It is also the stop that Jesus will enter earth again and He will descend and when He does it will split Jerusalem and the mount creating a canyon that will run from the Mediterranean to the Jordan and that water will actually bring the Dead Sea to life again. It will be sick! We challenged to thing about if we are ready for that and if we have done all we can to be ready for that, I know I am not and have not and need to do better.
From there we walked into the Garden of Gethsemene. We didn’t talk or anything we were given 15 minutes to pray because this was where Jesus prayed and began to take on the sins of the world. It was so cool to just have peace and quite and pray. No matter where you go there is always people but not in the garden, it was so cool.
We continued on the Passover trail and into the city and stopped at the pools of Bethesda.

These pools were where lame people would have hung out because when the water stirred the first person into the water was healed. Well in John 5 we see a story where Jesus heals this man who was at the pool for a 38 years trying to get healed but never could make it. We see Jesus just do His thing and ask him if he wanted to be healed and then told him to get up and take his mat and walk, so he did. We were challenged to recognize our problems and want to be healed as the man wanted to be healed and not be blind to our problems.
We moved back into the main streets and began our walk through the Via Delarosa which is the path where Jesus would have carried His cross through to the Joffa Gate and to Golgotha. I loved this! It was through the markets sections of the Muslim quarters and the Christian quarters so we got to see how crowded it was and how intense the people there are! When we finished the crazy path through the markets we were told about how the struggle would have been for Jesus. The city would have been pretty close to the same lay out so Jesus would have went right through the extremely crowded markets, we even had mild amount of people because it was Shabot, and since He was carrying a cross it would have made it even harder! It gets worse too, since He has a cross people in the markets would know, or assume in this case, that He committed a crime of whatever it was and it could have involved thievery so they hated the man already and as He walked through the crowded markets and streets carrying a cross they would have been kicking, hitting, and spitting on Him. We got to see and experience a tiny bit of how hard it would have been for Jesus. It was crazy and eye opening.
Next we hit the Holy Church of The Sepulcher.

That is the site that is very well believed to be the site of the mount Golgotha in the day and also the place of burial for Jesus. It is now a church that is owned by 5 different denominations and is a pretty big battle ground for the religions but back to Jesus. It was so crowded! So crowded that I couldn’t really focus or anything. I am hoping it will hit me later but at the time to be honest it sucked. I wanted it to be a cool a moment but I could focus on Jesus. Once we got done looking around we all say down and talked about how we felt that is how most people feel the first time but we were encouraged to remember that it’s all about Jesus and the events that happened there and that it was the biggest victory in the face of the world yet! I can’t wait to focus back on it and meditate later. From there we got to go shopping in the markets! It was so cool! I love being able to wander and look around in crazy places! So fun!
From there we had Shabot lunch!

Bread and different dips, a typical Shabot lunch.
We then moved into the temple wall ramparts which were pretty tight! We walked around almost the whole west wall and a little bit more.

It was a cool view of the city and the temple.
Next we hopped on the bus and headed to the last stop of the entire trip, the Israel Museum! There was only 2 things we focused on here because of time but so worth it! There was a huge scale model of first century Jerusalem that we used to just talk a little about geography and used it a little to get a picture of what Jesus would have dealt with. It was the best model ever! I want it! Next thing was focused on was these things called the Dead Sea Scrolls, nothing to serious. It was so cool! We got see a lot of the stuff they found with the scrolls and we got to see a lot of the scrolls including a part of Scroll A found in Cave 1 of Qumran which is the biggest, oldest scroll of Isaiah that we have. It was incredible! After we saw that we all hung out for a bit and then headed back to the hotel!
Once arrived we got orientated for the rest of the trip and the had some down time and then we had dinner and a banquet!
Now begins my 30+ hours of travel!
Day 10: Mount of Olives, Garden of Gethsemene, Bethesda, Via Delarosa, Holy Church of The Sepulcher, Shopping, The Ramparts, and The Israel Museum/Dead Sea Scrolls.

Shalom friends and shalom Israel! See you soon!

Day 9: Knee Deep In The Pitch Dark

Today was a pretty good and interesting day in the Holy City and the surrounding area! We enjoyed a little of The City’s of David as we traveled from one city of David to another to a mountain of Herod and to another city if David! Confused? Finish reading and it will make a little more sense.
We began our day heading to the City of David and that is the city on the hill of the Kidron valley that David built because it was closer to the stream in the valley. We headed here for one purpose and one purpose only: Hezekiah’s tunnel! We got to do the whole walk through the tunnel! So Hezekiah had this tunnel dug out and covered so that the city could have miem kiem (living water) even if the tunnel became under siege. It was so cool! Some of the group decided to do the tunnel without lights and I chose that too! It was so fun! I turned on my light one in a while to look at the cave but did the whole thing black! It was incredible. We just had kept a hand on the ceiling and a hand on the side as we trudged through the sometimes knee high water, so so so cool! My type of thing. Once we reached the end we were at the oool of Shiloam. The pool of Shiloam was just where the water pooled at the end of the tunnel and where they would gather water from the bottom of Kidron Valley. It was so fun!
From the pool we headed into a passage way that was used as a sewage way that run under neath the town into the Kidron valley. So we went into this sewage way at the bottom of the valley and ended up after a slippery passage right at the southwest corner of the temple!
Once we got to the temple we got guided through what has been excavated parts of the temple to want it hooked like at Jesus’s days. So we literally popped out into Jesus’s time at the temple. We walked around the corner to the south side of the temple and headed to the south steps of the temple, the same south steps that Jesus would have taught on! So we all sat on the steps and talked about the steps. We talked about how rabbis would stand on the south side steps to teach new ideas or things because they offered good seating and a stage almost and it was near the temple. So with that we discussed that the spot we were at was a huge percentage that Jesus taught on those exact steps. It was so cool again to just be where Jesus was and too see what it would have looked like and a picture to use when I read about moments that happened in that area. So cool!
Next we headed to another one of Herods amazing structures he had build way back when. This one was called the Herodium. It was a hill that Herod had made, yes Herod had a hill made, like a mountain. He had this built as his and his families private home on top of this mountain he built because you know Herod he had a building problem. Well we got to see these ruins and see where Herods body was found too buried in this hill! It was pretty cool. The best part was the view we got to see of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the Judean wilderness!

It was cool.
Next we headed to little local shop of Bethlehem for lunch and another little shop for souvenirs! It was a cool shop because it was all to support the small >2% Christian community of Bethlehem. I bought a couple things but not much but I got to support the Christian community of the town of our Lord! That is all we did in Bethlehem, we were running low on time.
We headed back after that and I took a nap and then had dinner! After dinner we went to an over look over Jerusalem and had worship! It was awesome!
That was day 9: Hezekiah’s Tunnel/Pool of Shiloam, Sewage Passageway, Old City/Southern Steps, Herodium, and Bethlehem!
Tomorrow is the last day!
I had more pictures but the Internet won’t let me put them up.

Shalom starts Friday at sun down so Shabot Shalom my friends!

Day 8: The City Of David

Today was pretty cool! We stayed around Jerusalem and did a lot of sight seeing. A lot of really cool stuff but not a lot that I can really expand on so this will be kinda short but still pretty good too, I hope!
We began our day heading to a high point of Jerusalem looking onto the city in a panoramic view!

We had our devotion from this point and the devotion centered around the Holocaust and Micah 6:8, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” We have a Jew here on the trip with us and he spoke about how he and his family lost 11-12 of his family from the Holocaust an how we need to remember to do those things from Micah 6:8. We just got to have this really cool view overlooking the awesome city!
From being above the city we moved in down in the city sticking to our theme of the Holocaust and we went to Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem is a pretty big Holocaust museum of Jerusalem. We began the tour by our Jewish guide telling us about the importance of knowledge of the Holocaust and how many have no idea about it. He just shared his deep feeling about the importance of remembering and forgiving. It was very somber. We then got to walk through the room of remembrance and then on to the children’s memorial. From those we got to enter the actual museum part of the museum. It was crowded and that really blocks me when I am in a museum so that was no fun but it was still a really amazing experience to learn more about that moment in history and most of all see things from the moment that made the tragedy real to me and the devastation real to me. I heard many testimonies of survivors and them telling the immense struggles that went down and saw many videos of actual footage, some that was very disturbing and very saddening. Over all the museum was a huge learning experience but a very saddening one at the same time.
We than had Israeli pizza! All kosher pizza but it was amazing crust, which we all is the most important and best part!
We then moved into town, to the old City Of David, Old Jerusalem. It was incredible! I’m just gonna walk you through our trip! We began by going into the western wall tunnels which is an excavated areas that have been found and have created a tunnel system all along the western wall! It was incredible! We saw the layers of the temple and the temple walls, layers dating back to the time of David! We moved down to the layer of the 1st century where Jesus would have been alive and we walked along the whole west wall underground seeing the very intense hard work that would have been used to make this incredible temple. Some of the stone sections are whole and weigh 600 tons!!! Talk about some massive limestone!!! While down there we learned a little bit of history and learned the method that Herod most likely used to build the crazy huge walls of the temple. It was surreal seeing parts of the temple as Jesus would have because once you make this rocks how they are they ain’t moving. It was incredible. After moving through the tunnels we moved back up onto the surface and walked through the Muslim quarter back to the Jewish quarter, the Muslim markets were so cool and they smelt so good! Once back in the Jewish section we all got a chance to visit the western wall and pray at it.

It was cool and humbling at the same time, it also made me sad that so many Jews are not believing of The Miem Kiem (The Living Water). After we all had some time with The Lord at the wall to His dwelling place in earth for a while we moved further into the Jewish quarter and experienced it. I loved it! I loved seeing the little Jewish boys and their kippas running around and all the Jews relaxing and shopping and the soldiers hanging out in peace and ah just so much cool stuff in the quarters! We but to underground again, we go underground because people ended up just building on top of older stuff creating what is called tel, to see a house that was found and excavated.

This house was pretty cool, it was a first century house so that would be time of Jesus and it was a house to a very rich what we think was a Sadducees or a Pharisees house because it as extremely huge and they found 6 micvahs (ritual baths) which would not be in any roman would have or any “average” citizen. The house was huge! It was cool to compare the 1 century house we saw in Quartzim to this huge rich house and how different they were. It was also cool to see that almost all of the city could be sitting on some important cool archeological digs! We got see how they literally just built on top of this dig and created tel. So cool! After that we walked through what would have been the market and then we ended with Rich buying us all magnum bars! Ice cream!! So cool to this Holy city underground!
From there we headed back home for the night!
After dinner I got the opportunity to chat with some of the students about the Morman religion because they have slowly learned of my background so I decided to maximize the time I had with them and use that to chat with them! It was so cool!
Day 8 was great: Jerusalem Panorama, Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, Jerusalem; Western Wall Tunnels, Wailing Wall, and Jewish Quarters.

Shalom and Boker tov! (Good morning!) Erev tov! (Good evening!) or Lila tov! (Good night!)

Day 7: Before Agrippa

We had a good sad day as we left the region of the Galilee and headed west towards the Mediterranean Sea. It was quite a bit of driving but still stopped at 4 awesome spots!
The first stop was a really important spot in the early life of Jesus, Nazareth! It was a surprisingly big town now but it was really cool. We actual stood on top of a mountain over looking Nazareth and the Jezreel valley! We were introduced into how import the Jezreel valley was for the country, it was the center of the country and for the world back then it was the center of the world and it was a huge cross road! All of that making it very important! Many many many battles and very important things went down and will go down here! It was a beautiful view!
Our next stop was this place across the valley called Megido which is Hebrew for Armageddon! We all know what is going to go down here at the end, it talks about it in Revelation 16, you should read it and read 15 and 17. It will be crazy! Basically the biggest war ever will go down right here in this valley and Jesus wins! I won’t go into the end times any further than that but I will say I will be visiting this valley again sometime as a soldier dressed in white fine linen!
We then continued in to the top of Mount Carmel which was huge in the life of Elijah. Read 1 Kings 16-19 and you will see the long story that includes this mountain. The basis of it is that Elijah ends up getting the chance to have God prove Himself to all the Israelites over their love for Baal. We were asked a series of questions that were challenging I our relationship with our Lord, it was really good and really cool to see how Elijah was just like us but yet God loved him so so much! It was a really cool view also of the Jezreel valley from the top! Ultimately, what is gonna make you fall? That was the climatic question. It was a deep moment.
The last stop we had today was the old capital called Caesarea Maritima.

Caesarea was famous being a major roman town built by Herod the Greatof course and having the worlds oat intricate and biggest sea port of its age. Being roman you can imagine how similar to Beth She’an it was, and it was except a little less idol worship. It was a very well of city because of the huge port being incredible for trade. The coolest part of this city was the palace that is in complete ruins but you can see a good solid outline of almost the whole thing and there is one room here that is very special to the Christian life, it is the exact room where Paul gave his defense against the Gospel to the top guys at Caesarea in Acts 25-26!

It is incredible to sit in this room and read the exact thing that Paul so boldly told in the exact room! Wow. It really gave power to the whole story knowing how powerful these people were and yet how bold Paul was and how he just uses his story to share the Gospel! It was incredible! That was the message too, take every opportunity and be bold! We then got to walk about and play in then Mediterranean Sea and find pottery from over 1,500 years ago! It was every where preserved in the dirt and we got to take some! Way cool!
After a day of a lot of traveling we finally arrived and our hotel in Jerusalem and that’s where we are at! After dinner we enjoyed the awesome hit tub, sauna, and steam room and had a rap cypher!

So fun!
Day 7:Nazareth/Jezreel Valley, Megido, Mount Carmel, Caesarea

Shalom! I am beat!

Day 6: Dance, Dance!

Today was great! We travelled some pretty cools paths as we bounced from some New Testament back into a little Old Testament, super cool!
We started off our day walking from our hotel onto the dock and onto a boat in the Sea of Galilee. It was the best boat rider ever!

We started by just enjoying the beauty of just being on the sea and worshiping with song a little. We stopped in the middle and talked bout Jesus walking on water and how we need to try and not let the wind take us down and temp us like Peter did but if we do we need to cry out to Jesus as Peter also did. We continued on and things hyped up. We learned a Hebrew dance! It was pretty cool but the complete dance party after was amazing!!! Yes we danced in the middle of the Sea of Galilee! It was soo much fun!
We shored across the sea in a modern day town called Kursi. Kursi also has about 3 other names though, all for different centuries: Susita, Hippos, and way back it was most likely know as the region of Gerasenes.

Now history tells us that Gerasenes was one of the ten city’s apart of the Decapolis which was known for huge pagan worship full of idolatry and a lot of messed up stuff. Does Gerasenes ring a bell? Well check out the miracle from Mark 5:1-20. We see that Jesus and His disciples hop on a boat and head across the lake. Now you can imagine the disciples thinking that they probably shouldn’t go where they think they are headed because Jesus wouldn’t go there, it’s too sinful and righteous men just don’t do that. They land exactly where the disciples were thinking of, Gerasenes. They remember hearing some story’s of a crazy man who lived out there and you can imagine they had never been there so they were a little scared, at least I know I would be. So that thing happens and they see this man come out of a cave (there was caves all over the place in that area) and of course it is who we will call crazy Larry comes out and sees Jesus. I would be checking out if I was a disciple. But we see that Jesus keeps going and the demon calls Jesus God and begs Him to let them go to the pigs instead of being told to just leave, well Jesus says sure. So the demon flees and enters about 2,000 pigs and then the pigs all rush down the steep hill (which we saw that the closest hill by the shore was pretty steep) into the sea and die. The towns people didn’t like this and begged Jesus to leave so they all headed towards the boat and once there the demon possessed man begs Jesus to go with then but Jesus say no and tell him to go tell EVERYONE. That is significant because Jesus always tells His disciples to tell no one. They head back over to the Galilee. Look a little further in Mark at 7:31 and 8:1-11. We see them head back over to the region of the Decapolis, which would have been the area of her Gerasenes, and we see that a LARGE crowd was gathered… Wait hold on, last time Jesus was here they all hated Hik and told Him to leave except one, now they have 4,000 gathering to hear Him? Now this is not in the text but it makes sense that crazy Larry helped out and listen to the command Jesus gave him to tell EVERYONE so they began to like Him and want to see Him if He came back, it makes sense doesn’t it? Isn’t that crazy? Crazy Larry had nothing but the story of what Jesus did for him and he used it over and over again to impact people. That was the message that was shared while we were there, are you using the story God gave you? It was so encouraging and just an amazing moment to see this area of this amazing miracle.
So imagine New York or Las Vegas. The big city or Sin City! You would walk in and just look around and just say “WOW!” It would be incredible. It’s almost a big dream of a lot of people to go to one of those places. Well there was this ancient town called Beth She’an. It was the Vegas of the ancient days. It was the. Capital of the Decapolis.

It was the sin city of the day. Being part of the Decapolis, well the capital, we know that it was a huge pagan central worshiping many different gods of different things. As I said it was basically Vegas, full of sin and just a lifestyle that doesn’t honor God. In 794 an earthquake ripped apart a lot of Israel but the center of the quake was in Beth She’an and just destroyed the place and no one came back to rebuild it, it stayed destroyed and lies today as it was then. Archeologists have only excavated about 5-10% of it but it is incredible! There is the theater, the main streets, the biggest gymnasium that has ever been found in the Greek Roman world, sauna, and tons of houses, this place was incredible!

We talked about temptation. Jesus would have walked through this city at least a couple times and through that he would have been tempted multiple times but Jesus shows us the perfect example of taking temptations and taking the right path up instead of falling down. We were encouraged to not be defeated. Amazing analogy and view!
The next stop was a really cool Old Testament site called Gilboa or the Spring of Herod.

So we see in the life of Saul some sad moments. One being when he was about to fight the Philistines around 1 Samuel 27-28 when he compromises and seeks out the witch after God has left him. She tell him he will die pretty much. And he does, right in the valley of Gilboa. We also see in Judges 7 the story of Gideon. Gideon actually visits this spring called the Spring of Herod and his army is reduced down to 300 to fight the Mideonites. Crazy cool stories that we got to be a part of!

Then we headed home. Had a fun soccer game that bus 1, my bus won!

I am really tired so blog a little bit shorter tonight guys!
Day 6: Sea of Galilee Boat Ride, Susita/Hippos/Kursi, Beth She’an, Gilboa/Spring Of Herod!

Shalom!

Day 5: A Huge Realization of Context

Well today was a huge long day, but I would say the best so far! It was a really awesome eye opening day around the north Jordan and the Galilee area.
The first spot we stopped at was a placed called Qartzim. We again took time to talk about community. It was a ruin town of the ancient days. The coolest part was that they took a old ruin house and rebuilt the roof and the walls so you could experience what an ancient day house was like. We all crowded into this house and we talked about community and the passage in Mark 2:1-12 which is the story about Jesus teaching in a home and so many people filled it that a couple needed to get their friend into see Jesus to heal him so they just dug through the roof and he was healed. The story is great, you should read it. So it was really a cool experience to get crowded in this house and listen to someone teach.

They even had someone standing outside and yelling and banging acting like he was trying to get in. We literally experienced the passage and how uncomfortable and close things were back then and in that passage which led to us going to the synagogue and talking about how separated from family we are now then how we were (and in my opinion should still be) then. It was really good for the families to be so close and have nothing hidden, but we have this really crazy thing called personal space that didn’t exist then. It was really challenging. It challenged me to look at how my family was ran and how I can help my future family be closer and not detached from each other. It was amazing to see this stuff.
Our next stop was a really cool stop considering today in Israel was holocaust Memorial Day, it was the Mount Bental bunker on the border of Syria. At 10:00 today we happened to be at the bunker and at that time the whole country of Israel has 2 minutes of silence that we got to participate in. It was just cool to be a part of that time and this day here. We got to walk through this entire bunker that could be used as a legit bunker if things with Syria get worse.

We learned a little about politics and Israel and Syria while hanging in a bunker. It was cool.
So I love hiking as you all know, and our next stop was a really incredible hike!!! It was a hike called the Banias trail that leads to the Banias water fall and to the next site.

It was just a really beautiful hike!

It felt like I was in a tropical island rather than Israel! We took this trail for probably about 2 miles and then had lunch!
We had a chameleon stop by during lunch, that was the event at lunch.

After lunch we had the coolest stop ever! We actually had lunch here at this little place called Caesarea Philippi. One really cool thing I have learned was that Jesus used what surrounds Him when He taught and He uses this little town in what normally seems like a small passage but when you fully take in this area you see how significant this actually was.

So here is the passage: “When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:13-28 NIV). I want you to read the full passage before I explain it a little. So basically Alexander the Great came through and took over Caesarea Philippi and left some generals with a great retirement at this great beautiful spot, but they ended up using it for their own stuff and created multiple little temples there to worship idols, specifically; Zues, Pan, and one other. So they had all this crazy stuff going down and most of the worship was sexual worship so they enticed their gods with sex all the time. This little town was so full of sin. It also was the spring head of one of the springs that lead into the Jordan. The stream came right outside of the mountain next to the idol temples and they believed that hell and Hades lived in the underworld and also all of the people around and the surrounding regions believed that that cave entrance with the spring was the entrance to hell. So now with all that retread that passage. Caesarea is about 26 miles about from the region of the Galilee. So Jesus tells His guys to come and they start heading north and when they get going they start to think to themselves, “you think we are going to,” “no way, He would never take us there!” “Yeah your right.” They keep on going, maybe takes them 2 or three days to get there and once they actually get into the region the disciples are thinking, “He really did bring us here! What is going on!?!? This the pretty much the entrance to hell, He has nothing to do with this place!” And then He sits on the hillside looking into Caesarea Philippi and asked who they think He is and Peter declares Him God right there and then remember He used His surroundings to teach, so he points right down to the rock that is where all of this sexual sin happened and right next to the gates of hell and says “Peter on this rock I will build My Church” and then he points to the gates of hell, the river opening, and says “and the gates of hell shall never prevail against it.” Wow!! That is incredible! Jesus basically saying, I have won! I will build my church right next to hell and hell won’t even beat it! This blew my mind! Look at what happens next, Jesus tells them He is about to die, and Peter who just claimed Him God pulls him aside and says “uh Jesus the things you said Wong happen to you.” Right after he claims Him God he tries to tell Him He was wrong about something! Woe Peter! Was just the coolest thing ever to see this place and SEE the context of this story. Incredible!
Next we went to the area of Dan. Dan as we know was the northern most tribe and they didn’t really take the land that God gave them, they moved further north and decided to settle there where it was more beautiful. We talked about compromising again and how the tribe of Dan compromised with the land God gave them and that led them to multiple compromises and Dan didn’t make it into the 144,00, but he did end up getting their allotment. So a story of sadness but redemption! We just got to see the whole part of the city set up that has been excavated.

There was the temple and city gates from 3,000 years ago that had been excavated and there was one spot where some pottery was found that is the only physical evidence we have that David existed. About 10 years ago they found another older city gate that we got to see! It was 4,000 years and old and a legit archeological dig that was happening! It was so cool to see this actual city gate that was 4,000 years old!
Next we went to The Jordan River for Baptisms! It was so cool to this family of students enjoy this great moment together! We also got to play around a little.

It was really cold!
So day 5 was crazy cool: Qatrzim, Mount Bental, Banias Trail/ Waterfall, Cesearia Phillipi, Dan, The Jordan River.

Shalom from Israel!

Day 4: The Land of Jesus

Well we have moved north and with a move north comes a move from most of the Old Testament stuff into the land flowing with milk and honey! Also known as the land of our Lord! So all that to see we reached into the Sea of Galilee as mentioned in the last blog. It was a crazy cool eye opening day as all days will be.
We started by hopping right over to mount Arbel. It was incredible of course because it was a hike but it was not just any hike, it was almost a rock climb too! Loved it! The hike was way cool because on the way we stopped by some caves that the crusaders made into a fortress built into the side of the mountains, originally the zealots lived here. They had chose that location because it was defensible and because the Via Maris ( the biggest trade route of ancient times) ran right through the valley right next to Arbel so you control the trade you almost control everything. As we continued up it got pretty treacherous for some people with little experience. There was one spot where we almost got killed by some pretty mad bulls.

It was crazy and a little scary. Once we reached the top it was one of the most incredible views looking right over the Sea of Galilee and over some huge major towns of the region of Galilee!

With the view we sat and had a teaching moment about solitude, what a phenomenal place to talk about that, which was way cool to just see how Jesus’s solitude could have looked like and how so important it is to get away some times. We also looked at the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and how with the location that happened it was relatively close to Mt. Arbel and at the end of the passage it says that Jesus went to the top of a hill to pray and then He looked out on the lake and saw His disciples had gone a long ways from shore. We had a really cool view of the lake and it could have been that Arbel was the mountain or hillside but it is not sure. We do know that without a doubt Jesus would have traveled the Via Maris multiple times to get to Jerusalem. This land was Jesus’s land… Wow.
Next we took a little drive to a little place called Tabgha. Tabgha was a really unique area. It is a shore area at the north Galilee which was one of the fishing spots of the disciples who where fishermen.

The story we talked about here was the reinstatement of Peter. It would have happened somewhere in this area. The story has a pre-story which is very similar to the actual story. So basically a couple of the disciples were out fishing and were not catching anything and this man named Jesus came up and told them to try the net on the other side of the boat, so they did. They ended pulling plenty of fish! Then Jesus asked them to follow him as a rabbi and so they did. Now the story again Peter, John, and a couple more I believe we’re out fishing in the Tabgha area which is an area where you would fish to catch smaller fish so you would use a smaller boat and a smaller net. Also this is after Jesus has dies and already appeared a little and Him and Peter have not really had a conversation since Peter denied Him, John 21 is the place. So they were out fishing and again they were not having a good time. They were not catching a thing. Again some man named Jesus who was resurrected came up (they did not recognize Him) and again said try the other side and you will catch a lot. They did and this time caught so many they couldn’t even lift it out of the water and the net didn’t even break, that is crazy considering they would have used a small net that should have broke. Once they see this John tells Peter that He is The Lord and Peter quickly hurries to him and all the disciples follow. Then the reinstatement happens where Jesus askew Peter if he loves Him 3 times, similar to Peter denying 3 times, and then Jesus commands him again to feed His sheep. That’s pretty much the story that happened somewhere around Tabgha. We just got a really cool picture for that story and more knowledge of how and why Jesus did the stuff He did. Amazing.
We had lunch next which was Falafal! Falafal is a unofficial food of Israel, its just really famous. It was really good!

After lunch we went to the town of Jesus, Capernaum! Talk about some really cool history! First I am just gonna list some scripture that mentions Capernaum and then talk about it. Matthew 4:13, 8:5, 11:23, 17:24; Mark 1:21, 2:1, 9:33; Luke 4:23,31, 7:1-5, 10:15; John 2:12, 4:46, 6:17, 24, 59; and more. Well we didn’t really focus on one but talked about a couple and then honed in on Matthew 11:23,24; “And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.” We talked about how blessed Capernaum was to have Jesus but a lot of them stopped following Jesus. The encouragement was just that, are we gonna experience and know Jesus nut yet decide to not follow Him? Don’t let that happen.
Chorazin was our next stop. Chorazin is only mentioned a couple times in the Word but it is the same part of Jesus’s life and that is ironically in the same passage that we discussed at Cepernaum, “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.” Matthew 11:21, 22. So we know that it might have been in the same situation as Capernaum, and it could be because they were very close. So we talked a little about that but the main thing was to see what 3rd century places looked like and specifically the synagogue that is still in ruins there and the community they lived in way back in the day.

They lived so tight and I mean there was no such thing as personal space. The building types were called insula which was where you would just build onto your fathers house so everyone was right there in tight knit community. The impact was to never let community die. Community is so key! We also talked about the way the synagogue ran back in the day. Spark notes: Basically they had assigned readings and anyone who was of age had a chance to read and they read and then gave a dersh (short interpretation or message) to the crowds. We in Luke 4:14 this happens with Jesus. He goes back up to Nazareth and He is handed the scroll in the synagogue and the reading just happened to be a prophesy about Him. He read and then sat down the crowd cheered but they didn’t really get it so He said that I have fulfilled that this day in your hearing and they all rejected him. It was cool to learn the way it ran and make that connection so that now I have a picture for that passage and it has way more meaning! I love this!
The last place we stopped was the Mount of Beatitudes. Yes. So this was a very possible spot where the sermon on the mount happened so as you should we went here and someone taught the sermon in the mount. Nuff said!

We finished the day of swimming in the Galilee!
So all of today was, Day 4: Mt. Arbel, Tabgha, Falafal, Capernaum, Chorazin, Mt. Beatitudes.

Shalom chaver chavera! (Peace friends in male and female terms.)