Wow ! What an amazing day! We packed a lot in and rode the bus around to a lot of incredible sites here in these astounding Holy Lands ! I have some car sickness issues, but peppermint has been magical and Dramamine. Lol God is good! All the time!
We left the Bethlehem Hotel early Friday morning to go to Caesarea Maritime. Woohooo Maritime means by the Sea and you all know, I love the water. I couldn’t wait to see the Mediterranean Sea! It was a sunny day, unlike our cold and rainy time in Bethlehem and it was already brightening alll of our spirits. On our way there it became quite clear early on that things were getting more lush and once we got to Caesarea we were told that only the very rich live there. What a change from Bethlehem. Kinda sad, really, to see how much these people had. In Palestine the people there have two hours every two weeks to gather water in their containers/bins and it will have to last them two weeks u til they area allowed to go get more water. Can you imagine ?
Anyway....back to Caesarea. Acts 10 talks about how Cornelius was the first Gentile to concert the new religion. We talked a lot about Paul and how he was a prisoner and we later taken to trial. We talked about how he just sometimes didn’t get things. ☺️😉 He was later on trial in Rome.
We visited the Theater here. We had a little devotion and prayer here with all the other EO buses. This company is incredible and so so knowledgeable. We sang together as well. What a sound it was!! Timeline here is 2000 years ago when King Herrod ruled. We walked along the sea where the remains of the palace stood. He has his own freshwater pool. Later I will talk about how the water came from the aqueduct. I found that interesting to see how his pool sat right next to the Sea. The Hippodrome here was incredible to see and it was just uncovered in 1990. Amazing ! It was just sitting there under the sand. I could just imagine the chariot races going round and round in this 7000 person arena. You see this in the movies (Ben Hur) and it this was the very spot you read about in the Bible. Again, we are starting to see the Bible like a pop up book all around us and we are able to see the people there in this land. I am not one with words and it is very hard to describe something so amazing to see in real life.
King Herrod constructed the Roman Aqueducts in order to get water to come down from Mt Carmel. Later we drove by that area as well. It was just 12 miles away, but in those days that was a lot. The aqueducts were, well, just WOW.
We then visited the remains of the Roman Aqueduct King Herod had constructed in order to bring freshwater down from Mount Carmel (12 miles away). He used the fresh water for his pool, in addition to providing water for the city, which was the capital of Judea at the time of Jesus.
Next up was Megiddo (which means “city in the middle), where we saw the 3500 year old original steps to the city. We also saw the Canaanite city gates and the Israelite city gates, and learned that the cities were built on top of one another in layers. After one city was destroyed, the next would build on top of the remains. Reconstruction of the entire area is still underway. It was very interesting to learn that Megiddo was built and destroyed no less than 25 times over a span of a couple thousand years.
We marched our way up to Mount Carmel and it overlooks the Jezreel Valley(the breadbasket of Israel). I could just picture the battles of long ago and the armies that fought in this area. Elijah’s defeated of the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings’s 18 here in the Jezreel Valley. We saw a trough that was 3500 years old. We also saw a circular area where they had found human and animal bones where they had worshipped Baal.
Our day ended with the most spectacular view of Nazareth with the sun setting on top of Mt. Precipice. It is also known as Leaping Mountain. This view....the sun setting over Nazareth. Again...no words. Ruthie offered up a devotion to us and left us teary eyed. Thank you, Ruthie for your beautiful words.
We then checked into Club Leonardo, located on the Sea of Galilee.
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