A Pilgrimage to Israel

Tel Aviv is a modern city that serves as the transportation hub for Israel. Located on the Mediterranean Sea, this city of 435,000 is the economic and technological center of the region. We will meet our coach, driver, and guide here who will take us to our hotel in Bethlehem.

This hill at the center of Jerusalem is known by some as the center of the world. This is the hill where Abraham sought to sacrifice Isaac and of course, in time would become the location of Solomon’s Temple.

Hollywood producers have called it “ The Valley of the Moon,” and and indeed, Wadi Rum is an Arabian Fairy-tale waiting to be discovered. We begin our spiritual journey here on the desert floor where the Hebrew people would have passed on their way from Egypt. We will be glamping under the stars.

Petra is one of Jordan’s national treasures and its best known tourist attraction. Inhabited by the Nabateans, Edomites and Romans of old, Petra brought together the knowledge and skill of these civilizations to create this world wonder. This first stop will give us a taste of the world beyond Palestine.

The unusually warm, incredibly buoyant and mineral-rich waters have attracted visitors since ancient times, including King Herod the Great and the beautiful Egyptian Queen, Cleopatra.

Mount Nebo is significant because of its role in the Old Testament. The Bible says that Mount Nebo was where Moses lived out his final days and saw the Promised Land, which he would never enter.

Jericho is an important city located north of the Dead Sea in ancient Canaan (now Israel) not far from the Jordan River. It is mentioned by name 59 times in the Bible.

Around 1000 BC, En Gedi served as one of the main places of refuge for David as he fled from Saul. Ein Gedi means literally “the spring of the kid .” Evidence exists that young ibex have always lived near the springs of Ein Gedi.

These are the fields where David would learn his first lessons about leadership and life. It’s also likey the place he wrote many of the famous Psalms.

This is where King David captured the fortress of a Canaanite tribe, 1000 years before Christ. On this slender spur, David established his capital and pitched a tent to house the Ark of the Covenant.

This iconic location is as close as Jewish worshippers can get to the original holy places of the Jewish temple. They come here to pray and place written prayers in the cracks of this sacred wall.

Hezekiah’s Tunnel, part of Jerusalem’s water system, is located under the City of David. It connects the Gihon Spring—Jerusalem’s fresh water supply—with the Siloam Pool. According to 2 Chronicles 32:2–4 and 2 Kings 20:20, this tunnel was dug during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judahto prepare Jerusalem for the imminent attack of the Assyrian king, Sennacherib.

The West Bank city of Bethlehem is celebrated by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus Christ. Here Mary gave birth, the local shepherds came to worship the baby, and the Wise Men from the east came with gifts to pay homage.

Nazareth is celebrated as the town where the Virgin Mary, at about 14 years, agreed to bear the Son of God. It also was the home town of Jesus, Mary and her husband Joseph after the Holy Family returned from fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod’s soldiers.

This wedding chapel sits on the location of Jesus’ first miracle. Weddings are still preformed here today.

Near Caesarea Philippi, a city of Greek-Roman culture known for its worship of foreign gods, Jesus announced that he would establish a church. It was here he gave authority over to the disciples and the future church.

Among Holy Land sites, the Sea of Galilee has changed relatively little since Jesus walked its shores and recruited his first disciples. We will take a small boat and get a feel for what they must have known and felt as they fished these waters.

Together we’ll visit the location of Jesus’ most famous sermon and reflect on the characteristics of the kingdom of God that have transformed our world.

Jesus made the fishing town of Capernaum the hub of his itinerant ministry in Galilee, using the lake, its boats and its shores to spread his Good News. He calmed a storm, he walked on the water and probably even swam in the lake. When we stand in the ruins of the synagogue here, we will be standing in the place where Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah.

The East Gate was closed by the Muslims in 810 AD, reopened in 1102 AD by the Crusaders, and then it was walled up by Saladin, the first sultan of Egypt, after regaining Jerusalem in 1137 AD. The Muslim conquerors (the Ottoman Turks) added great stones to the Golden Gate in 1530 AD and a cemetery was planted in front of it thinking that the Jewish Messiah would not set foot in a cemetery.

This is the pool that you enter at the end of the trek through Hezekiah’s Tunnel. There are clear remains around this pool of the Byzantine church built by Empress Eudocia. This pool has long been visited as the pool of Jesus’s miracle; however, it dates to the Byzantine era, roughly 300 years after the time of Christ.

The Mount of Olives, one of three hills on a long ridge to the east of Jerusalem, is the location of many biblical events. Rising to more than 800 metres, it offers an unrivalled vista of the Old City and its environs. The hill, also called Mount Olivet, takes its name from the fact that it was once covered with olive trees. In the Old Testament, King David fled over the Mount of Olives to escape when his son Absalom rebelled (2 Samuel 15:30).

Every Friday afternoon hundreds of Christians join in a procession through the Old City of Jerusalem, stopping at 14 Stations of the Cross as they identify with the suffering of Jesus on his way to crucifixion.

The site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is identified as the place both of the crucifixion and the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth.

Just outside the Old City of Jerusalem on Mount Zion is the Upper Room, or the Cenacle. This structure has been regarded as the traditional site of the Last Supper since the fourth century AD.

This is the place where Jesus was baptized and why thousands of faithful come there to bathe and be baptized in the same place. More than half a million people visit the Yardenit baptismal site each year; for many of them it is to fulfill a desire of the heart and realize a dream: to be baptized in the waters of the Jordan River, the sacred river, the same waters where John the Baptist baptized Jesus.

Joppa is a port city with over 7,000 years of recorded history. It is known as one of the oldest functioning harbors in the world. This is the port where huge cedar trees were floated from Phoenicia to be used for the construction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Peter and his time in the Port of Joppa play an important role in the early church development.

Cesarea Maritime was the famous port that Herod the Great Built in the first century. This would also be the city were the Apostle Paul would be tried by Felix and imprisoned until his departure for trial in Rome.

In Christian apocalyptic literature, Mount Megiddo, the hill overlooking the valley where the current kibbutz is located, is identified as the site of the final battle between the forces of good and evil at the end of time, known as Armageddon and mentioned in the New Testament in Revelation 16:16.