The Judean Wilderness
The weather continues to be beautiful and we thank God for that. We began our day early and saw the sunrise on the Dead Sea. This is the lowest point in elevation on earth. We made our way up the coast to Masada. Masada has a tremendous amount of history. It was a palace of Herod the Great, and is connected with a significant amount of Jewish and Roman history.
From there we went to En Gedi. En Gedi is mentioned in Scripture in I Samuel 24 in the context of Saul's pursuit of David and then his recognition that the hand of God was on David. This is a beautiful desert oasis and it is easy to picture the biblical event taking place there.
After lunch we journeyed to Qumran. Qumran is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 by a shepherd boy. They are so significant because they contained the Old Testament, and predated any copies we had of the Old Testament by approximately 1000 years. Yet they confirmed the Bible as we have it.
We passed by Jericho on our way to Jerusalem and stopped in the Judean Wilderness where it is likely that young David wrote some of the shepherding Psalms, and where Christ fasted for 40 days and was tempted by the Devil at the outset of his public ministry.
Then we ascended to the Holy City of Jerusalem, making our way to one of the overlooks to the old city. Tomorrow we begin our tour of the city that holds so much of the world's history and future.
