Today was a more relaxed day, as we look forward to tomorrow’s Epicenter Conference.  We entered the Old City through the Lion’s Gate, and the Church of St. Anne is just inside.

Church of St. Anne

Though not as ornate as some we have seen, it has beautiful vaulted ceilings that provide it with magnificent acoustics.  Our bus group of about 40 was in there alone, and when we sang Amazing Grace in timid voices, it sounded like Heaven’s Choir itself was singing!

Just a few meters from this church are some ruins of old Old Jerusalem, including the Pool of Bethesda mentioned in John Chapter 5.  The morning light and deep shadows make it difficult to see, but if you click for the full sized image you can see more clearly.  The pool was actually very deep, and way down under that arch is the bottom of the pool.

The Pool of Bethesda

Street Sign in the Muslim Quarter

We begin walking the Via Dolorosa:  the route Christ followed as he carried the cross to Golgotha.  There are churches built upon every “station” of the route—largely based on Catholic tradition.  Scripturally speaking, much of what goes on in Jerusalem isn’t exactly “kosher”, shall we say.  Often, what is stated as fact is based on heresay and folklore.  The church of the Holy Sepulchre is a good example of that.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

It is deemed to be the location of the final 5 “stations of the cross” including where Jesus was buried.  While there is also the Garden Tomb, outside the walls of Jerusalem, that is more in line with what the Bible describes as the location of the crucifixion and burial.

A stop at the Israel Museum allowed us to view an amazing model of Old Jerusalem, as

Israel Museum (That’s not an iPod in my ear in all these photos; it’s a radio that keeps us in contact with our guide)

well as fragments of the original Dead Sea Scrolls.  The full set of originals is kept in a vault, but they have reproduced them for viewing in an effective way.

We finished our day with more than two hours at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum.  It is incomprehensible to me that all this took place; and even once all the nations knew about it, they were too busy to stop it.  How many times can humanity say “Never Again?”  It happened ‘again’ in Guatemala just 30 years ago.  It is happening in Syria as we speak.  And the Arab Middle-East wants nothing more than to be rid of Israel entirely.  The last phase of the museum was the Children’s Memorial:  A completely black, dome shaped room of myriad glass panels and nothing but one and a half million points of light peering out of the darkness.

O my Lord, O my soul…