Jerusalem, City of the Great King

PREFACE

I went on a tour to Israel in March and April of 2006. I kept a daily journal of where we went, what we saw and what our guide taught us about the Bible Land. Also, I planned to rewrite it and send a copy to each of the tour members.

I earnestly pray as I start writing about our tour that God will give me the grace to recall what we saw, heard and felt in our hearts when we visited the real places in Israel, and that God will grant me the ability to complete the report. Also, that this book will help each of us who was on the tour to better recall the wonderful places that we visited and the Bible stories that transpired there.

I wish to thank the following people for being a special blessing to me on the tour, Bro. Eddie Sutton, our tour leader, for giving me the privilege of working under him, Jenny Wright, Barbara Rice, Danny Kirkland, and Barbara (Babs) and Bobby Shockley for going with me making my trip possible and Danny Kirkland and Bobby Shockley for assisting me over rough walking areas and up steep places and stairs. I pray that if they ever need assistance that our Lord Jesus Christ will have someone as nice as they were to me to help them, A special thanks to Fran Kirkland, Danny’s wife, for taking off work to drive those of us living near Hamburg to the airport in Little Rock and for meeting our plane on our return trip to drive us home .We offer a special thanks to the Ashley Motor Company Crossett, AR for the free use of a van large enough to carry our luggage and us to Little Rock.

I dedicate this book to each of the above and to the other tour members who helped make this trip a wonderful tour, Bro. Greg Curtis, Alexander (Alex) and Patsy Chaillet, James and Patsy Myrick, Ruth Ann Suttles, and Sharon Carter.

May our wonderful Lord give you a greater understanding of the Bible Land as you read this book is my earnest prayer.

FROM A PRAYER TO ISRAEL AND BACK

The plans of visiting Israel again started with a prayer. Jenny Wright was visiting in my home. She was leaving I was walking with her to her truck when she expressed the desire to go with me on a tour of the Holy Land. I had not visited the Holy Land for nine years due to the unrest in that country but tours had begun to visit there again. I believed with all my heart that our Lord knows the future as well as the past so we prayed together asking God’s permission to go if we could make the trip safely. After we prayed, I knew that God had given us a yes answer and that we would be going on the tour even though I had no idea when or the tour host I could work under.

Bro. Eddie Sutton sent me word, within a few weeks, that he was planning another tour to Israel in March and April in 2006 and invited me to go with him again. The tour company that we had traveled with before believed it to be safe now for tours to visit that country again. The brochures had not been printed because the plans were not complete, but that he would send them, as soon they were available.

I called Jenny to tell her the good news that it looks as if God is answering our prayer sooner than we had expected, and to see if she could go on the tour at that time. She assured me that she still wanted to go if she could get off work. She called back within a few days to tell me the good news that the hospital where she worked as a nurse had given her permission to be off work.

I announced in the Sunday School Class that I teach, that I was planning another tour to Israel and invited them to go. The first question asked was Is it safe to visit that country? My answer was, I believe that God knows the future as well as He does the past. I always pray to God for His direction, and to stop us before we go if we will not be safe.

Barbara (Babs) and Bobby Shockley accepted the invitation. When Barbara Rice learned that we were planning to go she chose to go but said that if I did not go she did not want to go. I knew if she did not go some of the others would not

go. Bro. Danny Kirkland was the last person to join my group.

Bro. Sutton called to tell me that the brochures were being sent but that he had contacted a serious lung infection that was causing fluid to collect in his lung. He had been to a specialist but his lung was healing slowly. He was concerned that he would not be well enough to make the trip as planned. We prayed together asking God to heal his lung if it could be His will for him to direct this tour. We were encouraged because he still had some time before the departure date and continued making plans.

A few weeks before the departure date I prepared dinner for the people going that were going with me to make final plans and show slides of the Holy Land that I had made on previous tours to prepare them for the tour. I hold the idea that the more one knows about a country the more he sees when he visits them. Being together and talking about the biblical events that transpired there generated a lot of excitement and eagerness for the trip.

I believed that if there were ever any doubt about God’s will in our minds for us not to go on this tour it was gone for good. I was wrong! Two weeks before the departure date I got an eye infection that was very painful. I went to my family doctor, Dr.J.D.Rankin. He gave me a prescription and said if it was not healed by the end of the week to come back. My eye got worse instead of better. By the end of the week I knew that if it did not heal I could not go. The peaceful feeling in my heart that God had answered my prayers was gone! Monday morning by eight o’clock I was sitting in my car in front of Dr. J.D. Rankin’s office waiting for the office to open. An emergency came in, making it almost twelve o’clock when I saw the doctor. He said that I needed to see a specialist. I know how long it takes to see an eye specialist because they are so busy.

I told Dr. Rankin of my plans to leave the next Monday for Israel and after praying about the tour I believed it was God’s will for me to take others to see His land. Now my way was being blocked, and it seemed as if I was not going to be able to make the trip. I guess I did not understand God’s answers anymore.

Dr. Rankin is a good doctor, also, a great Christian man. He reminded me that Satan could be the one trying to block my way and not God. I asked him to pray with me. When I left his office I knew in my heart that my eye would be healed by the departure date. The feeling of peace had returned.

He called an eye specialist and made an appointment. The specialist said if I could be in his office at one thirty, he would work me in, I might have to wait for sometime, but he would see me. I said, I will be there!

I felt that it was not wise to drive that distance alone with my eye hurting. And my family members were all working. I called a good friend, Barbara Foster. She was happy to help me. By one thirty we were in the specialist’s waiting room with a prayer on my heart. Within two hours we were on our away home with medicine in my hand. The doctor said that I did not have an infection but had lesions on my eyeball just like a chapped lip. The lesions could have been caused by sitting in the wind or in front of an open-faced heater.

I came to the conclusion that if Satan cannot cause a child of God to get sick, he can tempt him to do something that will, because I had sat in front of a heater reading until late one night at the time that my eye began to hurt. Also. While burning a pile of leaves, the wind changed suddenly and the smoke and heat blew into my face.

FROM HOME TO ISRAEL

By March 27, 2006, the departure date, my eye was well enough for me to go. When the alarm sounded at four O’clock in the morning, I was up moving in a hurry. The first thing I did was to kneel beside my bed and offer a prayer of thanksgiving to God that Bro. Sutton and I both were well enough to go on the tour, and I asked God for a safe and happy trip for each of the tour members.

Fran and Danny Kirkland were at my home by five o’clock to drive Babs and Bobby Shockley, Barbara Rice and me to Little Rock. Jenny Wright was to meet us there. We were to be at the airport by eight o’clock for a nine fifteen flight to Houston, Texas for the transatlantic flight to Paris, France, then take another flight across the Mediterranean Sea to the international airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. A guide would meet us there to escort us throughout Israel.

Bro. Sutton met us at the door of the airport encouraging us to hurry so our luggage could be examined and loaded together and be sent straight through to the airport in Israel. That was an advantage because we would not have to handle it again and no tour member’s luggage would get lost. The time had been changed from the schedule we had to an earlier time.

Jenny Wright arrived a few minutes later in plenty of time to make the flight but not in time to get her luggage inspected and loaded with our luggage.

After going through security, we met the other tour members at the Continental Airline departure gate with a short time to get aquainted.

We were airborne at 9:15 A.M. and one hour and twenty minutes later we landed in Houston, Texas. We had to wait until 3:10 P.M. then take an overnight transatlantic flight on a large Air- France plane to Paris, France.

We were traveling toward the sunrise making us have to run our watches forward several hours. It got dark earlier than we expected. We could have slept except for a young couple with a baby that cried for several hours. My heart ached for the baby and for the parents. Nothing they did seemed to comfort the child. Although I did get some sleep some of our tour members said that they did not sleep. We arrived in Paris at 8:30 A.M. local time with two hours to kill before leaving for Tel Aviv.

Our next flight from Paris was across the Mediterranean Sea to the International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel. After leaving the plane we went to the luggage claim area to get our luggage. Our luggage was all there except Jenny’s. She was fortunate that she had a change of clothes in her carryon bag. She reported to the airline that her luggage was misplaced but was not told how soon they would deliver it to the hotel.

Our tour guide Samir Bahbah, a Christian Arab, met our tour and escorted us out of the terminal to a small bus where our driver, Omar Hussein, was waiting for us. I felt blessed by not having to wait in a long line going through security. The inspectors had permitted our tour members to enter Israel without being inspected because our luggage had been approved in Little Rock before having it sent direct to Israel. Our carryon bags had also been inspected in Paris before boarding the plane.

I whispered a prayer of thanksgiving that we had reached Israel safely after two days and one night traveling and that God was blessing us with an inspiring visit of the Lands of the Bible where our Lord Jesus Christ lived.

From The Airport to Natanya

It was about 3:30 o’clock when we our bus left the airport driving North. The driver, Omar Hussein, was a young man I judged to be about twenty-five years old, and unmarried. We learned later, during the tour that he was getting married the week after driving our tour bus. He could not speak English but tried hard to please.

Samir, our guide, appeared to be in his late fifties. He said that we would have time to visit the ancient city, Joppa and the modern city, Tel Aviv on our way to Netanya, where we would be staying our first night in the Holy Land.

We soon realized that Samir was an educated man very knowledgeable of Jewish history and the Holy Land, and spoke the English language well.

When we first set our feet on Israeli soil we were standing on land steeped in biblical history. The airport is located on the site of the ancient city called Lod in the Old Testament, called Lydda during the New Testament period. According to tradition the city was fortified as early as the days of Joshua. It was destroyed and rebuilt by the tribe of Benjamin after the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity (Chron. 8:1,2; Ezra 2:33 and Nehemiah).

The Apostle Peter visited Lydda during his ministry as is told in Acts 9:32-33. He came to this city and had a great revival. While here he found a man named, Aeneas, who had been an invalid for eight years with a crippling disease called Palsy.

Peter said to him: Aenias, Jesus Christ maketh thee well. Arise and make thy bed.

Aeneas immediately arose. The healing of this man resulted in many people in Lydda and the Sharon Valley turning to the Lord.

The Sharon Valley is a part of the coastal plain in Israel extending from Joppa in