Chapter 11 - Saturday,
3/25/89
On our way
down to the Masada and the Dead Sea today we stopped in the wilderness of Judea
where we could see the Monastery of Saint George. There are currently eight monks who live
there in solitude. It is a desolate
area, no grass or greenery whatsoever.
This could possibly be the desert where Jesus was led and tempted by
satan for forty days. The area is so
typical of the Valley of the Shadow of Death that the Psalmist wrote
about. I sat and meditated, and it
seemed I could see Jesus walking alone here, staggering from hunger and
thirst...yet He did not give in to “pleasure for a season”, a quick fix offered
by satan. He waited for God’s
best....and God sent ANGELS to minister to Jesus. Would I rather have satan’s momentary
enticements...or angels from God? I
believe I’ll wait for God’s best.
As we
continued on our way to the Masada we stopped in Jericho, an oasis in the
desert with many palm trees, flowering bushes, and citrus trees. This city, which reminded me of Florida, is
the new Jericho. The Biblical Jericho
that Joshua defeated could not be rebuilt, according to the oath which Joshua
had pronounced (Joshua 6:26). It is a
Tel (hill) outside the current Jericho.
Through the centuries it has been protected from being rebuilt, showing
God means what He commands, and He had commanded that the city be destroyed.
The Masada
is a fifty acre fortress built on a mountaintop plateau 1,300 feet above the
Dead Sea. We took cable cars to reach
the top. Most of us elected to walk the
snake path back down, a fairly steep, rocky descent that winded back and
forth. It took thirty minutes to reach
the bottom. The next time I would opt
for the cable car back down. My legs
were trembling uncontrollably by the time I was half way down, and I found it
would be easy to lose my equilibrium.
You dare not misstep, or it was a straight flight to the bottom!
It was time
for a break, so we stopped at En Gedi, a public beach on the Dead Sea. This is the lowest spot in the world, lying
1,300 feet below sea level. The Dead Sea
is one-third salt, and those that went in said it was impossible to try to stand
up, it just flipped you over. From there
we went to Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves. In the 1940’s some shepherds were looking for
their sheep in the caves and found seven original scrolls containing the
scriptures of Isaiah, Deuteronomy, and Habakkuk.
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