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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The post 47 Beautiful Photos of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives to the Upper Room of the Last Supper appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.