SO today was a pretty good day! Super tired so far but we have been walking all over the place and running up mountains, i will get to this later, and for the most part waking up at 5:30 or 6 every morning! I have a few posts coming so don't worry here comes all the fun!
Thursday was called Jerusalem walk, we literally walked around Jerusalem, and we started by going to the Dome of the Rock. For those of you who call it the Holy of Holys, then we are on the same page, but for those of you who do not know, the Dome of the Rock is a structure the Muslims have in the Old City and what it is, is the place they believe that Muhammad ascended into heaven, now on the Christian side of things i don't really believe that to be true but what i believe is that this is where the Holy of Holys is. I believe that on this place is where Solomon built the temple, then it was destroyed in 586 and then rebuilt in 516 again and then destroyed again. So this is the place where God was said to have dwelled and the place where Jesus would be entering into the city of Jerusalem and going to this point. It is really interesting to note that this place is forbidden for anyone not Muslim to go into and there have been problems in the past between Jews and Muslims over this spot. The Muslims wont let anyone excavate the area because, in my honest opinion, i believe they know that something was there at one point, aka the Temple built by Solomon and again in 516.
Then we strolled on down to the Wailing wall, now this was a cool place. We got to see a multitude of worshiping and we even got to see some Bahmitzvahs taking place. The culture is so amazing to realize that this is how things are really done over here, it is impressive. While at the Wailing wall me and a friend were swindled into a tour of the library and then asked for donations in a small area in a kind of back area. That was really creepy, that is all i am saying about that. The idea that people are at this wall, crying out to God was amazing, the intensity of it was so powerful. Some of us even made our prayers at the Wailing Wall itself, that was awesome!
The next stop was on the Southern part of the Old City and it was called the Southern Wall. This place was really cool because it was actually pieces of the old wall that Herod had built. There is one place that can be seen that has the huge rocks from the old wall that had been pushed over upon destroying the wall. The were actual pieces of the road that Jesus, our Lord and Savior most likely walked upon. We then went down a ways to a staircase which was massive in size. It led to the triple and double gates where people would enter into the temple mount area. These steps had been there since the day of Jesus time and I WAS SITTING ON THEM!!! Just think about how cool it would be to be walking up the steps to the temple mount with Jesus. Just amazing. From our vantage point we could see the Kidron Valley bending East going towards the Dead Sea and we could see all the hills of the Eastern and Western Ridges around us.
Okay now hold on there are two more coming tonight so just be patient and let me tell you about my life here in the beautiful city of Jerusalem!!!
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