Tourists are not allowed to take pictures of the prayer sections of the Western Wall, once you are past security. See the gold dome? The wall that you can see here in front of the dome is where people pray.

Alan and I were so excited to pray at the famous “Wailing Wall.”

Truthfully, I was not sure exactly about the history of this wall. I went into our Jerusalem tour thinking the wall was the only remaining wall from the ancient Jewish temple.

That’s almost true. That entire temple was completely destroyed.

The Western Wall is what remains from the retaining wall that was built around the temple. It is considered holy because it was the outer part of the temple, renovated by Herod around 19 B.C. It is the closest standing wall to where the Holy of Holies was located.

Beside the Western Wall

“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built! 28Yet give attention to your servant’s prayer and his plea for mercy, Lord my God. Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence this day.

29May your eyes be open toward this temple night and day, this place of which you said, ‘My Name shall be there,’ so that you will hear the prayer your servant prays toward this place.

30Hear the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.

~King Solomon, in 1 Kings 8:27-30

Me, with the wall back behind me

Immediately next to the Western Wall is this area.

Here is another distant picture of the Western Wall. The Wall is to the right, in front of the gold dome. In the front of the photo is the check-point gate. The guards look in your bag and make sure you are properly covered. Men wear hats, and everyone should have on modest clothing.

Did you know?

–The Temple Mount is also called Mount Moriah and Mount Zion.

–This is also the location where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, and the Lord instead provided a ram for the sacrifice.

–They say it is here, on Mount Moriah, that Jacob saw a ladder ascending to Heaven in a dream.

–Jerusalem was destroyed and re-built 9 times, but the Western Wall has remained through it all.

–The Orthodox Jews do not like for us to call it the “wailing wall.” That’s offensive. Instead, it should be called the Western Wall.

–Men pray on the left side, and women pray on the right. There’s a partition to divide the 2 groups.

–Israelites refer to the wall as the Kotel.

–From 1948 to 1967, Jerusalem was under Jordanian rule, and Jews were prevented from visiting the wall in spite of the peace agreement.

–In the 6 Days War, the Jews re-took the Wall, in 1967, after 2,000 years.

Sources:

1. My tour guide

2. History & Overview of the Western Wall  on jewishvirtuallibrary.com

3. Six Reasons Why the Wall is Holy  on Aish.com

The Dung Gate is very near to the Western Wall. That’s the Dung Gate behind us.

I felt privileged to have the opportunity to pray at the Western Wall. Placing my right hand upon it, I just sort of breathed in the atmosphere of worship. I didn’t even know what to pray, and I regretted not having been more careful to formulate an important plan for what to pray about at this holy place.

While I have no memory of what I prayed for, I do remember feeling thankful and in wonder of it all.

This is part of the Western Wall, but not the part where people go to pray.

Thankfulness was the theme of this trip for me. I felt thankful and undeserving, but I took full advantage of it, and we enjoyed it immensely.

It was Shabbat, the day that we were there. That’s what they call Saturday, the Sabbath day. The Israelis all greeted each other and us, their guests, with “Shabbat Shalom.”

Our tour guide said that at dusk on Shabbat, the ultra-orthodox Jewish men come out and dance at the Wall. I would have given all the shekels in my purse to watch that, but alas, we were with a group, and it was time for the group to move on.

Shalom, y’all!

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After we left Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, located now within the Church of Holy Sepulchre, we headed down the Via Dolorosa. All day I had the song Via Dolorosa, in my head. Okay, sometimes I couldn’t help but sing a little of it out loud. I’m one of those people. I usually have a song in my head that occasionally accidentally comes out for others to hear.

The Via Dolorosa means “the way of suffering.”

Jesus did not get to head down it as we did. He walked UP it, to Calvary, after being brutally beaten by Roman soldiers, and carrying a cross on his back.

So what is the Via Dolorosa?

It is simply the path Jesus took as he carried his cross up the hill to Golgotha, where he was crucified.

What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” Pilate asked.

They all answered, “Crucify him!”

23“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.

But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”   (Matthew 27:22-23)

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”

25All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!”

26Then he released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.    (Matt. 27: 24-26)

Funny story: Alan met this German man on his flight from Sweden to Tel Aviv, and then we ran into him on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem! You never know who you will see again.

It’s a beautiful city. I loved these trees, which were everywhere.

I don’t know what this pathway looked like back in the days of Jesus. Our tour guide said there were no buildings here then.

These days, in order to trace the Via Dolorosa, you actually have to walk through a Muslim market area.

You can click here to see our Israeli tour guide talking to us about it. She was outstanding. The video may be hard for you to hear, though, unless you have a device that’s capable of loud volumes.

Station 9 on the Via Dolorosa: I think she said this is one of the places where Jesus fell.

Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. 28They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, 29and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said. 30They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. 31After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.   (Matt. 27: 27-31)

Station 7 is in an extremely busy area. Actually, pedestrian traffic was high the whole way.

Yes, they sell American sports team gear in Jerusalem too. LSU, anyone?

Where Simon took the cross.

As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross.

33They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”).   (Matthew 27: 32-33)

The lights hung above us remind us that we are standing in a Muslim area, where they were celebrating Ramadan at the time that we were there.

crossing through the Muslim market

We couldn’t get close enough to get a picture of the giant gold-domed mosque. These guards only let Muslims past the stairs.

Alan, placing his hand where the legend was that Jesus had stopped and held on to the wall.

And this is us at the security checkpoint to the famous Western Wailing Wall. Yes, we went there too. We’ll talk about that next!

crowded street through the Muslim market, overlapping the Via Dolorosa

“From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land.

46About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli,^c lemasabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).^{d   (Matthew 27:45-46)}

Back in those days, the Bible wasn’t divided into chapters and verses the way we do today. They named a passage by the first words of that passage. “Eli, Eli, lemsabachtani” is Jesus not only crying out to God, but also referencing Psalm 22.

This part will give you chills, if you stop and realize what Psalm 22 is. It is a promise fulfilled by Jesus:

Psalm 22 is long, but it begins like this:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me,

so far from my cries of anguish?

and it ends like this:

All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;

all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—

those who cannot keep themselves alive.

30Posterity will serve him;

future generations will be told about the Lord.

31They will proclaim his righteousness,

declaring to a people yet unborn:

He has done it!

True. He has done it. Praise the Lord!

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Welcome back to the Jerusalem tour. I cannot wait to take you to Calvary in pictures, also known as Golgotha!

Where did we leave off? Ah yes, walking through Old Jerusalem.

In Part 1, we saw the Mount of Olives and entered Old Jerusalem. The first thing we saw there was the Upper Room and David’s Tomb.  Let’s stroll on over to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now. This church now sits on top of the site where Jesus was crucified, Golgotha.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

This one church houses the site of the crucifixion, Golgotha (the rock shaped like a skull), the tomb of Jesus, the stone where they washed the body of Jesus, among other relics and stories and art work centered around the crucifixion.

There are also several active church denominations that have their services at The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

You may wonder how they know this is the place or how accurate this could actually be. Alan and I certainly did.

…And the answer it is that it appears to be surprisingly well backed by archaeological evidence.

How? For one, they began constructing this place in 326 AD. That is less than 300 years after the fact.

There is another tomb that claims to be the correct tomb of Jesus. However, according to my Crossway study Bible info-graphic on page 2066 and 2067, that does not hold up. Archaeological research proved that particular tomb to be too ancient to have been a new tomb at the time of Jesus’s crucifixion

In the 1960s, archaeologists excavated ground below the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Do you know what they found when they dug?

They found “an isolated mass of rock in the middle of an extensive quarry,” as well as rock-cut tombs from the first century, AD. That is good news.

Where was Jesus crucified? On a rock called Golgotha, meaning place of the skull.

To make it even more interesting, did you know that old Jewish tradition and early historians say that the skull of Adam (as in THE Adam, the first man) is preserved in this hill. So it was not simply a rock that looked like a skull. It is also the place where the skull of an important ancestor of mankind is buried. (Crossway Bible, 2001)

Okay, so that last part may be more of a legend. Who knows? But I loved that the archaeological evidence DOES indicate that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre sits marks exactly the right spot, right down to the age of the tomb.

It needs so many repairs, but there are so many different groups that use this building that they cannot agree on how to make the repairs, so nothing changes.

See the ladder to the window above the right (sealed off) archway?

That window is where the Armenians had to get into the church many years ago. They literally made them climb through a window because the people running the first floor did not want them crossing through their section. No one needs the ladder now, but these groups cannot even agree on whether or not to move the ladder.

This building, which is centric to all of Christianity, as it marks the site where Jesus died for mankind, is the perfect example of the problem with the Church today.

We should all be one church, not arguing over menial, unimportant details. Instead we are divided. And what happens to a house divided against itself? Well, it cannot stand.

That wasn’t just Abraham Lincoln that said that. He was quoting Jesus. (Mark 3:25)

This is the place!!! The very site where Jesus died for ALL mankind!

As divided as we are, God can still use us, but how much greater our ministry would be if we were united!! United by Christ!

This display marks THE spot where the crucifixion took place. Because the scene (in the photo above) looks drastically different than what it did way back in the first century, A.D., it is hard to really feel like you are there, even when you are there.

There were people who were falling all over themselves, trying to touch the rock in this spot. But with the crowds, being indoors, and the noise, and so much competing for my eyes’ attention, it was hard to focus.

It is worth visiting. Only know that it’s very tourist-y.

But then, how could it not be? People all over the world have experienced major heart and life changes from the gospel message. God loves you where you are. Jesus died to pay the price for all of our sins. Faith. Hope. Love. We need only believe. Naturally, thousands of people a day visit this place where it happened.

I am actually surprised there aren’t MORE people there.

I think that’s largely because we have this misconception that it is not safe in Jerusalem, but I can assure you, I felt perfectly safe.

Alan took the photo above. I actually didn’t even see that there was rock under the glass like that until I saw these pictures.

I did take a moment to rub the stone. The actual stone is under a stone that they put on top of it to preserve it, but still!

So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. 17Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). 18There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

19Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS             John 19:16-19

The Bible says that when Jesus gave up his spirit, there was a great earthquake. Here you can see damage from that earthquake.

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

51At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

54When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”                           Matthew 27:50-54

The key to Christianity’s most holy site actually belongs to a Muslim family.

They open the doors each morning to let the Christians in. Isn’t this fascinating?

So many mixed emotions in the Holy Land.

1.) I am in awe to be standing where Jesus and his disciples, and Mary, and David stood.

2.) Our lack of unity is baffling.

In the book of John, chapter 17, Jesus prayed:

20“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Previous Israel Posts in this series:

No, I couldn’t possibly go to Israel next week.

Mount of Olives

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The post Jerusalem in Pictures: Golgotha & The Church of the Holy Sepulchre appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Jerusalem Tour Part 1: The Mount of Olives and Old Jerusalem

Day one of our Jerusalem tour took us from the Mount of Olives down into Old Jerusalem. We walked through the Jewish Quarter, saw ancient ruins from Roman roads, and wove around to the Upper Room where Jesus had the Last Supper. I’m going to show you all of it.

Psalm 122:3-5 

When you step out of the tour van onto Mt. Olivet, it looks like the photo below. Standing there on the Mount of Olives, you can see an incredible view of the sprawling city of Jerusalem:

There was so much I did not get to see, because Jerusalem is huge, and you cannot see it all in one day.

Thankfully, our tour’s very first stop was on the Mount of Olives.

I stepped out of our little bus and breathed in the holy air. Wow! Jerusalem! The Mount of Olives! Wow! This is where Jesus hung out! He came HERE to pray. I think this was his quiet, sanity place.

Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him.⁴⁰ On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” ⁴¹ He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ⁴² “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” ⁴³ An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.⁴⁴ And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.^a]                                                       

Luke 22:39-44

Would you like to see the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed that blood-sweating prayer?

They built this Church of all Nations in the midst of it, which makes it much easier to locate.

If you look in the very front of this picture, and also to the right of the church, you can see the olive trees and stones. This is the Garden of Gethsemane, located on the Mount of Olives.

When I took this photo, I was just snapping. I had no idea what I was photographing, except I knew I wanted these beautiful churches. Later I went online and did my research to find the garden.

The oldest trees in the garden are much larger than the ones in the photo above. That’s only a sliver of it.

By the way, they built the church on THE ROCK they believe Jesus knelt on to pray.

This is the REAL Garden of Gethsemane. According to this article, among many others, they proved this through research. These olive trees planted here are the oldest in the world. Most of the trees are not quite old enough to date back to Jesus. However, they were all carefully grown from the same tree. They discovered this using DNA research. The caretakers preserved a lineage of trees that was there when Jesus was.

Some sources report that there are 3,000 year-old trees in that grove that are not much more than stumps now, but still, pretty amazing.

I would have loved to have walked through that garden, but alas, it was not on the standard tour.

4In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east;and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south.

Zechariah 14:4

The Bible tells us that in the end times the Messiah, Jesus, will return to Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives.

Jesus wept and lamented the future, “set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side . . . crush you to the ground . . . and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognise the time of your visitation from God.” (Luke 19:37-44)

Not 40 years later, that prophecy was fulfilled. The Romans burned the temple and destroyed Jerusalem.

Jesus wasn’t the only one to weep on the Mount of Olives.

David also went up the mountain weeping with his followers in 2 Samuel 15:30.

DaddyO did some research for me. It turns out this church is Church of Dormition.

I went into this whole thing expecting a moving, spiritual experience.

The thing was that there were lots of distractions. We had an excellent tour guide to listen to and pictures to take. Plus, you are pouring sweat in June, and you must stay with the group. Therefore, pausing for reflection or prayer? That didn’t happen much, I am sorry to tell you.

We all piled back into our bus, made a stop by a souvenir shop, and then headed on over to Old Jerusalem.

Our group was a hodgepodge of folks from Sweden, Holland, Switzerland, and the States. Who knows where all we were from? Thankfully, everyone seemed to understand English.

There is also a Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. They say it is similar to this one. I bet in Israel it is even more powerful.

It was actually awesome to be in the Holy Land on the Sabbath day.

In Hebrew, it is not “sabbath”, it is “shabbat.”

Shabbat is not just a nod to the law of Moses, either. They take this thing seriously. Everywhere you went, everyone would joyfully greet each other with, “Shabbat shalom!”

Shabbat is their day of rest, which is important, because they work hard the other 6 days of the week. On Shabbat, they do no work at all, according to their tradition, not even to push a button.

Therefore, there was always one elevator in “shabbat mode”, which means that it automatically stops at all the floors.

We entered Jerusalem through the Zion gate. Our first stop was King David’s Tomb and the Upper Room, where Jesus and his disciples had the last supper.

And here is the part that surprised us: the upper room is above David’s tomb.

My jaw dropped open when she told us that.

David’s tomb has rules. Men visit it on one side, women on the other, not together.

Remember, Jerusalem has been sacked many times over the years, so these are not the same buildings as the ones standing during Bible times. You see these beautiful buildings? They were built by the Crusaders around 1099.

People were leaning everywhere, praying, in groups and out loud in the Upper Room.

It was so noisy, I could not carry a thought in my head. Our tour guide couldn’t either, and she chased them all out.  Yep. The whole incident reminded me of Jesus chasing the money changers out of the temple, only she didn’t turn over any tables, and these people were only praying, though they were terribly noisy.

Our tour guide had a name that sounded like Molly. She was a former officer in the Israeli Army, and she was quite likable. Molly was sharp and quick, with an answer for any question about the Holy Land, past or present. She knew her stuff.

Notice my wardrobe.

If you are touring holy sites, be sure you have your knees and shoulders covered. It’s a matter of respect, but also rules. They give you a shaw if your shoulders are uncovered. If you are showing too much leg, they provide you with a long skirt thing.

In Jerusalem, the only place we went that was strict about it was the Wailing Wall. In Capernaum, only the monastery said anything to women with bare shoulders.

The Upper Room and Surrounding Buildings, to Include the Dormition Abbey:

“This is Dormition Abbey, so called because it is the site where Our Lady “fell asleep”. In the basement is a beautiful mosaic mural of her sitting, before her death, surrounded by the apostles in prayer. Oral Tradition has it that they did that for nine days which is the basis of the modern day novena prayer.”

That is fascinating. I wish I could have visited the basement of this monastery.

Also, this white tile is so prevalent because it occurs naturally in Israel.

Therefore, they are able to build large cities with all matching buildings. It has a lovely effect.

This was so exciting! We don’t have buildings in America that are that old! You can even arrange a tour to go through these tunnels that run under Jerusalem to see way more of the ancient ruins.

Hope you enjoyed the tour!! On the next post, we’ll see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. If you want to read all about our trip to Israel, be sure to check out my ebook of the whole story, for sale on Amazon.

Shalom!

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