Wednesday morning Jerusalem
Today is our final day, and it will be a busy one. Wakeup call is at 5:30 and we must be on the bus at 7 a.m. We will drive for an hour and a half to Masada, come back to En Gedi, and then to Qumran. Masada was an awesome experience.
It was the Alama for the Jewish people. In 70 AD when Rome destroyed Israel, about 1000 Zealots headed for Masada, Herod's home away from home with 3 huge palaces filled with water, food supplies, and everything necessary to survive for a long time. The fortress could almost have been impenetrable, and in actuality, there was no reason for the Romans to drag all of their war machines out to this desolate wilderness to snuff out these Jewish rebels. The legend says that they came because the Zealots made a horrible mistake. They had gone to the citizens of En Gedi to convince them to join in their battle against the Romans. They refused because they had a financial, peaceful relationship. It seems that these people made a perfume called Persimmon - not from Persimmons though - that supposedly could make people fall in love. A woman would take the "craw" of a chicken, fill it with the perfume, and tie it around her ankle. When se saw the man of her dreams, she simply had to shake her ankle releasing the perfume and it would be like the man was hit in the head with a hammer. The Romans were their biggest customers, buying it and selling it around the world. When the citizens of En Gedi refused to join the fight, the Zealots came and killed 750 of their own people. You see, the Zealots were a horrible group who killed few Romans but many Jews. When the Romans heard what they had done, they laid siege to the fortress and built a ramp. Using slaves, they built the ramp and pushed their war machines to the gate, but the Zealots killed the slaves with arrows. They then brought Jewish slaves to do the work, and the Zealots would have killed them as well, but the wife of Eleazer, leader of the Zealots, said they would kill no more Jews. The Romans were then able to breach the gate, but decided to wait until morning to finish the job.
The Zealots could not imagine living the remainder of their lives as slaves, so Eleazer convinced his people that death was preferable. Since the Jewish tradition precluded suicide, the men drew lots. 10 men were chosen to kill 1000 men, women, and children. Then the ten men would kill each other, after a lot was chosen for the one who would then fall on his sword. When the Romans came into Masada the next morning, only one old woman and a few children had survived and told the story. Archaeologists have actually found the lots, and the story was recorded for posterity.
Qumran, of course, is the area where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. The Essenes, another Jewish sect with strict rituals and membership requirements spent their time copying scripture and telling their story. John the Baptist was a member of this sect, but left before the 4 years of service and study were through to become a full-fledged member of the community. When they knew the Romans were coming, they hid their scrolls in clay jars and placed them in caves where a young shepherd boy found the original scrolls which contained the oldest existing copies of most of our Old Testament.
The beauty of the discovery was that these manuscripts proved the accuracy of our translation. Even recently, more scrolls have been found in different caves, and more are probably out there. You have to see the area to understand, but perhaps hundreds or thousands of caves have been covered over by landslides and are only discovered when the torrential "streams in the desert" roar through the wilderness as the rains fall in the northern part of the country. The week before we came, a rain such as this occurred and within an hour, 3 to 5 feet of water rushed through the wadis, dry river beds, washing boulders and sand into the Dead Sea. At times, the streams reach as high as 10 feet and destroy the road leading to Qumran and Masada. The truths here open our eyes to the words of Scripture in ways I have never before imagined. What an experience. Thank you, Sonya, and thank you, church, for giving me this opportunity. I will never forget it.
Finally, we came to the Dead Sea.
This was strictly about fun and relaxing. Apparently people pay good money to cover themselves in the mud. I think that is just wrong. It was nasty. As soon as you step in, you sink almost to your knees. You can hardly walk out any ways -- you have to basically crab walk backwards. But it is insane how you float. We have pictures, and I will post them later. After a quick cleanup at the beach, we headed for Abraham's tent where we enjoyed camel rides (3 times this trip) and a marvelous meal. Chicken baked in date honey. We had to hurry back to the hotel for good showers, packing, and a quick trip to the airport. Customs, as usual, was fun. I won't tell you who packed something they shouldn't have in their carryon, but his initials are P.A. We all made it through fine, but we did have a couple of our ladies that had to get their VAT money back. One of them arrived at our gate when we were just about finished boarding. Close call.
The trip was long, crowded, warm, and noisy. Not as bad as the trip to Israel, but sleeping was difficult. On the trip over, we traveled in daylight almost the whole way, but the way back was in total darkness until we got to New York, and the first rays of sunshine appeared almost as if to say, Welcome home.
As much fun as it was to go, there is nothing like landing on American soil. Even though I am still hundreds of miles away from my family, I feel like I a home.
Thanks for going on this journey with me. I will probably do some editing on this, add some pictures, and make it a little bit more readable. I need to add some of my thoughts that will take some processing, but let me conclude by saying that my life has been changed. I have grown to love Israel even more. I have discovered that the Jordanians are a people that welcome us with open arms. And I am praying even for the Palestinians that need to see Jesus even more than the others.
