Jarom in Jerusalem: Last Hours of Christ's life field trip.

Our last Field Trip day, we walked down to the Church of all nations and Gethsemane. I’d been there many times before, but I’d never had the architectural parts of the church explained to me including what the fresco on the top meant, how the church was made to look like a dark garden, how the alter was made to look like a giant cup, among other things. We went to a secluded garden across the street (there was a tomb full of human bones there!) and we had a neat devotional. After some time to think, sing some hymns, and give some testimonies, we walked over to a Russian Orthodox Tomb of Mary as well as an underground chapel where there used to be an olive press. I’d visited both before but it was nice to go to that Olive Press Chapel. Also, this was the third tomb of Mary we’d seen or been by: one the day before and another in Turkey (tradition says that Mary went and stayed with John the beloved in Ephesus.) After that we walked up to Jerusalem and retraced some of the steps of the Via Dolorosa, including where the Antonia fortress was in relation to the streets, as well as some stones that would have been on the street in Christ’s day-> there is actually a good chance he was led out of the fortress on or near those stones. (At the Antonia fortress is where most people think was the most probably place where Christ appeared before Pilate and was scourged and had the cross put on him.) On that road now called Via Dolorosa are two churches which we visited. The first was called the Church of the flagellation to commemorate Christ’s whipping at the hands of his Roman Captors- (meant to bring the guilty close to death before Crucifixion. Perhaps Christ was also mildly whipped before this when he appeared before Pilate as well.) We also went to a church named after St. Anne, who was Mary’s mother. I’m not sure why we stopped here on this day other than it was very close to the other churches we were visiting, but Catholics believe St. Anna gave a virgin birth to Mary, much as Mary gave a virgin birth to Christ-> that way her daughter would not be “corrupted” to give birth to Christ. I don’t believe that Mary had to be born from a virgin birth in order to give birth the Savior though. The church of St. Anne claims to be the oldest Christian church in Jerusalem-> damaged but never destroyed since Crusader times. It was impressively large and had great acoustics. We sang like 10 hymns there and a girl in our group who has lots of voice training also sang there. Outside, there are excavations from where the pool of Bethesda was. Many different people have built and changed the area, from Romans, to Byzantines to Crusaders to Mamelukes etc. But still it was cool to crawl around in there. We don’t know how exactly it was shaped in Christ’s day or what area it covered, other than it had 5 porches or places to enter the pool or pools.

Well, after that we went to our last field trip site: the Garden Tomb. The tomb, located on the north side of the both the Old City of Christ’s day as well as the Old city of today, is a place where many prophets had said they’ve experienced feelings that Christ was buried there or near there. Our archeology teacher, who once came out in support of the site, now believes that it is likely not the site of Christ’s burial-> although I still haven’t read that extra article he sent us explaining why. But it’s still a very peaceful place and was a good place to end up. We sat in an outdoor area, had a short devotional/ hymn singing/ testimony meeting. Then we were done for that day.