Today we left for Galilee.
Our first stop was the road to Emmaus, where Jesus appeared after His resurrection and explained the Scriptures to two travelers. (Luke 24:13-49).
While there, Arie also showed us the valley where Joshua fought the five kings and the Lord did a celestial time-out for a day so that Joshua could fight with the sun to his back.
Next we journeyed to Caesarea, a city on the Mediterranean where the Holy Spirit first fell on Gentiles (Acts 10) and where the Apostle Paul was imprisoned for nearly two years (Acts 23:23-26:30).
We saw the building where Paul was imprisoned and the ampitheater where he preached to Festus, King Agrippa and Bernice. The ampitheater is in remarkably good shape for being more than 2,000 years old.
Arie then drove us to the location of the story of Ahab, Jezebel and Naboth’s vineyard. (I Kings 21-22:38). When Arie said he was going to give a teaching from this passage of Scripture, I suggested the men just wait down the hill until he was finished. I thought it was funny. The women didn’t think it was funny.
We next stopped at Gideon’s Spring, where the Lord thinned out Gideon’s army before going to battle.
Arie gave a great teaching on how the men drank from the spring and why the Lord used it as a test for who would go into battle (Judges 7:4-7). It’s not what I was taught in Sunday school, but after being there and seeing the spring, it made a lot more sense than what I was taught.
Our last stop of the day before the hotel in Tiberias was Beth She’an, an ancient polis, remarkably well-preserved because of an earthquake that destroyed and covered it in 749 A.D.
In the evening at the hotel in Tiberias, most of the group gathered in the lobby and discussed our favorite teachings from the trip thus far.It was a good time to reflect on what we had learned, to laugh and enjoy one another’s company. GS