Jerusalem-The Old City

Yesterday I went on my first field trip for my Land and the Bible class. We went to the Old City in Jerusalem, which was amazing we saw so many different things it was hard to take in it all. But first of all it was cool to see as we approached the city the wall surrounding the Old City. Contrary to what I thought before this isn't the wall of ancient Israel but actually is a wall built by the Turks in the 1500s and is actually not even built in the same places as the all of ancient Israel. As we entered through the gate it was interesting to see that near the gate is a large wide-open space and there is a good amount of people moving in and out of the gate and also just walking throughout that space. This helped me better understand what is meant in the Bible when people are talking at the city gate such as the story of Absalom where he stood near the city gate talking to all the people in order to turn them from David. 

After we entered the city we went to the Citadel 

which is a stronghold used by Herod. The Citadel also very well 

could have been where Pilate lived during the time of Jesus and could have been the place where Pilate tried Jesus. So we got to go to the very top of the Citadel and from the top you can pretty much look over the whole Old City and see many of the buildings. We were able to roam around the Citadel for awhile and see the different parts of it and everything.

After the Citadel we started to head farther into the Old City and we got to walk through some of the streets until we reached a church called "Christ Church". This was the first Protestant church to be built in the middle east and it is one of the few Messianic

 churches located in the Old City. It was cool because when we went there one of the deacons of the church spoke to us about how hard it was to build a Christian church in the area 

and so he gave us the basic history of the church and then he went on to explain to us the difficulties that the church faces today especially when dealing with Jews. He explained that although many Jews come and visit not many will accept the message. Then while there we ate lunch out in one of the courtyards and to my surprise we actually had Pizza Hut for lunch and it was really good. 

After eating some pizza we headed back to the city and walked around some more until we came to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

This is believed to be the location of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and the location of His tomb. Although it is not positive that this is the exact location it still was a humbling experiencing when thinking about the fact that this could be the place in which Jesus conquered sin and death and essentially conquered the world, this could be the place where the most amazing act of love may have taken place. 

After this we moved on and ventured through the city some more and we headed more to the eastern side of the city. As we got further we started to get to more of the crazy market areas where the street is pretty narrow with a bunch of venders along the sides and people shouting a bunch of different things but I have no idea what any of them were saying... It was interesting to really start to experience a different culture especially in that way. 

Then we got to walk along the top of the wall on the eastern side of the city for awhile until we reached a spot on the wall where we stopped for a little while. The place we stopped was in clear view of the Mount of Olives.

 So we read Zechariah 14:1-5, which is a prophecy of the return of Jesus Christ and how He will set foot on the Mount of Olives. So in plain sight of where we were standing Jesus Christ will one day return to that very site...amazing! How cool it was to see a place that I have heard so much about in the Bible but was never able to picture until now.