Israel 2012 – Day 4 – Pondering Thought

Day four, we headed to Nazareth. We spent a little more time on the bus today. The landscape is still amazing no matter where we traveled. This is truly God’s country.

They are even Spartan fans! (Michigan State!!)

We visited “yet another church” called the “Church of Annunciation”. This was a pretty neat site. I believe this is the biggest church we visited. The interesting thing Nazareth is a majority Muslim. Here is a story describing some tension in the past regarding a sign hanging in Nazareth.

We were dropped off and were able to wonder in the streets walking to the church. It was interesting that is for sure.

Here is the inside of the church. I’m not sure if I’ve used this saying before. We visited a few holy sites and each time a church was constructed. I quickly learned to “not worship the place, worship the person who was in the general area 2000 years ago”. It’s easy to get caught up in the trimmings, yes they are neat, but you have to remember not to idolize it. Here is part of the inside of the church.

The sanctuary had some really neat murals

Here is the next location. Read Luke 4:16 ( a passage Jesus read boldly).

Kim Sutton has a great picture of this where no one is in the church.

After we left, we were walking back to the bus to head to our next location, Church of the Synagogue. We walked through a small street market and low and behold, a fresh meat market, yum!! It was unusual to see fresh meat hanging and knowing people purchase it for that day’s consumption.

Our next stop Megiddo (aka Armageddon) was a bit of a ride, here is more scenery on our way. The country side is absolutely beautiful; this is a snapshot of leaving Nazareth.

Here is a good sign explaining, the bottom words explain that in book of Revelation, Megiddo is also known as Armageddon. The final battle will take place here.

The entrance.

Ancient rocks!

Here is the wide angle view of the country side. What’s amazing, if this is the place where the final battle will occur, we know the result. J

Here is a deep hole (probably 30 to 40 ft deep and p10 – 15 ft wide). It stored grain. Notice the steps going down, can you imagine being the person who had to bring up the grain?!

Another cool thing they did was the way they brought water to everyone.

They built a spring to feed water to the location. I apologize I didn’t get a better picture, it was about 30 or 40 ft down, I was giving our tour guide a hard time, and say it was a ‘good well’, and not a ‘bad well’. She said it was a spring.

Overall, Megiddo was pretty cool. The history and biblical significance is well documented. It remains to be seen if this is the place of the final battle, I do know if that is the case I want to be on the side of Jesus and his heavenly army J Any who, one final story when we first got to Megiddo, I was thirty and needed a snack . I wondered off and found a place we’d later eat. I got a bottle of water and a snickers bar. I handed the guy a 50 shekel paper bill. He handed me some coins back and fidgeted and bit, and handed me a 10. I thought for a second, waved my hand and said ummm, he handed me a 20 shekel bill, and I handed him the 10 he originally handed me. I think he was trying to made a few shekels off me, not 100% sure. Was a bit odd. The tour guide lectured me nicely J, you need to buy water on the bus (which was $1.00 per bottle).

The next place we headed was places that where our tour guide spent time digging. It was an absolute awesome place; they had cattle grazing along with cactus in the same pasture. The Jezerrl Valley was awesome.

Jezreel Valley.

After spending time hearing from Dr Williams about his time digging at this location, we headed to our last location, Gideon spring. (Read Judges 7:6-7, 16-17)