Israel 2019 Day 4

Our day started with the most ancient history of Jerusalem: the city of David. Pastor Mike Ruel read 2 Samuel, encouraging us to consider God’s faithfulness in Jesus, the Son of David. We saw the ancient Jebusite walls guarding the Gihon spring and the water system that David’s men used to attack the city around 1000 BC (2 Samuel 5:6-10).

We then walked through the tunnel king Hezekiah had dug in 702 BC in light of the impending Assyrian siege (2 Chronicles 36:1-8). Today, over 2,700 years later, water still flows from the Gihon spring into the pool of Siloam!

It was at the pool of Siloam that over 700 years later Jesus healed the man born blind in John 9. All that man knew was that he was blind and now he could see, and that Jesus had done it. His sight is contrasted with the blindness of the religious leadership of Jesus’ day, who were blind.

We walked up to the temple on (and under) the 1st century road from Siloam. Once there, we explored excavations at the southwest corner of the Temple Mount. Many of those stones are right where they were during Jesus’ ministry.

Just a few feet away was the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, where today Jews still come to pray. For them it is the closest they can be to the location of the temple. Pictured below are prayers stuck into the wall in hopes that because they are close to the temple, God will answer them.

We ended the day in the Jewish quarter, seeing the broad wall of Hezekiah’s time (also built in light of the Assyrians) and the Byzantine Cardo, the main street of Jerusalem in the 4th-6th centuries AD. We walked over 5 miles today, but in each step we saw evidence that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises to David, he is the Lamb of God, and he is the better temple.