Day 7: The End!

The last day was great! However, it did start out a little bumpy when the hotel water went off of 6:10 in the morning, right when everyone was showing. It came back on like 15 minutes later, but was a huge inconvenience. I’m glad to be able to drink the water here in the Jerusalem center, because there you could only shower with it, not drink it. Anyway, we walked from our hotel up to the Grand Mosque in Bursa. (Bursa was the capital of turkey a long time ago as well.) Our tour guild talked a little about Islam there as well. All of the ladies in our group had to put on head scarf the headdress to cover your hair, to go in.

In Turkey visitors are allowed inside the mosques there. If fact in most places in the world they are. But here in Jerusalem they’re not. Several years ago, not too long ago, Yassar Arafat and others who were funding the mosques here in Jerusalem decided they were going to punish the world by not allowing anyone inside their mosques unless they could prove they were Muslim. The whole thing is very counterproductive. Example: the tour guild in Turkey could say Islam was a religion of equality and peace where they love everyone and I could believe him since we were sitting in his mosque and treated kindly as a guest. But in Jerusalem it’s harder to warm up to Islam when you can’t enter their mosques, learn about their religion, and see one of their beautiful places of worship. I’ll just have to wait until another time before I can go into the Dome of the Rock or other mosques here. Oh cool fact: on ancient temple mount they had tunnels and stuff to access the temple mount easier, and they’ve turned those into a mosque, so it’s an underground mosque on the temple mount, although we can’t currently go there.

ANYWAY, after that we were going to try and have an early lunch and get to Istanbul early to do more things but there was a scheduling conflict with the restaurant. I think our change of plans was heaven sent (our tour guild agreed) though, because we got to visit Iznik instead, the ancient city of Nicaea where the Nicene Creed was signed! There is an ancient church there that commemorated the signing of the document from the 6^th century. The church used to be just ruins until just a few years ago they put a tile roof on it so it was more attractive to visitors. The real place it was debated and signed is probably underwater know. It was pretty sweet to learn about the Nicene Creed at the place it was signed. I’d been hearing about that creed ever since I was a teenager.

So here is the deal about the Nicene Creed. Constantine, upon becoming emperor, saw that divisions in Christianity could wreck havoc on his kingdom, so he called the council to settle some things. At this time the churches in local areas were run by bishops, and often times each bishop would have a different opinion on things. At that time there was a group started by a guy named Arius that basically claimed that Christ wasn’t divine, that he was lesser like some kind of angel. The rest of the Bishops at the time could be divided into 2 categories: a Trinitarian group that believed God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost were three manifestations of the same being, and another group that believed in a triad of Gods, that God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Ghost were three separate personages. (A lot like Mormons.) Well, these two groups got together and found some common ground in believing that Christ was divine, and wrote a creed that would exclude the Arians. As our teacher pointed out, this document would preserve a belief in the divinity of Christ for many centuries, something that may not have survived without Constantine’s reforms. We can look at the glass as half full.  It was later on when an emperor would decide it was a crime to believe in a three-part Godhead, and only Trinitarians remained.

Except from the Creed:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty

Maker of all that is seen and unseen

And one Lord, Jesus Chirst,

The Son of God, begotten from the father,

Begotten not made, one with the Father, (excluding the Arian doctrine that he was made, not begotten)

Through whom all things came into being

Who because of us men and because of our salvation came down and became incarnate.

And the power of the Holy spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary…

Then we drove and ate lunch super fast, got on a ferry, and went to see the “Hagia Sofia” church. This church was build in 360 and is huge! Later, it was converted into a mosque. Because of this, much of the original artwork was preserved under the paint they painted over it. It was the largest church of its time, and I believe the 4^th largest church still! It was really neat, if for no other reason it was super old but still standing. You can fit the statue of liberty inside the main dome! There were some really old frescos that were neat to check out.

We also had some time to check out a marketplace, and had our farewell dinner- lots of seafood, since we were only a hundred meters from the sea. We then drove to the airport. We gave our tour guild some sheets of paper where we had written nice things about him. He seemed kind of embarrassed. We really liked our tour guild and the last few days he said some pretty hilarious things I think I’ll include. At one point some girls asked him “Would you rather cut off your arms and your legs?” while playing the “would you rather” game. Obviously he’d never played the game and started accusing students of wanting to “cut his legs” with a slight Turkish accent. It was funny. One time he showed us a picture of a turkey on an I-phone and said “this is my brother.” It was pretty funny. I’ll include some more.

Anyway, we got on the plane after undergoing some questioning at security, and our plane left at 11:40. We sat with some people from Israel and a tour guild who asked us a lot of questions. He asked my friend Justin “So tell me a little about your church.” Well, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints signed a non-proselyting agreement in order to build the Jerusalem center so we’re not allowed to answer those questions! Justin explained it to him but the guy thought it was pretty weird, even though he was Israeli. He kept pressuring Justin to say something, finally Justin changed the subject and asked him “So where do you live?” and the guy answered as a joke “the government won’t let me tell you,” but after that the conversation went well.

We got back to the center at about 3 in the morning (it was the only flight that could fit us all!)

Iznik, Niceae

Hagia Sofia

More Hagia Sofia