Category Christianity

Nov 20 2012

Antiwar Israelis protest in the streets

Few days ago, before the first rocket went in Jerusalem, I was walking along King George Street after visiting a friend to see people with banners and posters being waved and beating a drum.    These Israelis are anti-war protesters that don’t want a ground invasion of Gaza.    Almost everyone here doesn’t want a war.  Those called for duty in the army having a willingness to defend their nation though.

However most people don’t want to be a doormat to terrorists so making sure all traces of terrorist infrastructure are gone from Gaza seems the right idea.

I am not sure how these people propose to fix the issues of rockets coming 20, 40 or 75Km away from Gaza into your own communities though.

Maybe they could protest through the streets of Beer Sheva or Ashdod which is Hamas’s favourite target practice at the moment.

Nov 20 2012

Meanwhile in Russian speaking communities in Israel….

Christmas panto in Russian!

This is quite an unusual sight as Christmas is a non-event apart from Arab Christians and Armenian Christians who live here.

This was outside a shop in Agrippas Street in Jerusalem that sells newspapers, magazines and books in Russian.   Russian speaking people from ex-Soviet states make up at least 15% of the population here.

О нет, это не так!

Nov 19 2012

Hamas in Hebrew

A local Israeli I work with told me something interesting today:-

The word Hamas, the political movement that controls the Gaza strip, has eerily similar word in Hebrew.

I am not going to tell you, you have to find out for yourself:- 🙂

http://translate.google.com/

here is the text you need to copy and paste into:

חמס

Here is Psalms 140 in Hebrew which it also occurs in.  Click on above link or click here http://study.interlinearbible.org/psalms/140.htm (if you have a Windows XP computer you might need to add Hebrew support to read this)

Nov 16 2012

Rockets hit Jerusalem

The last few days things have been heating up with bigger rockets coming out of Gaza.

Until recently cities in the more south of Israel, like Sderot, Ashdod, Ashkelon and Beer Sheva, were being hit with around 1 million people needing to regularly go into bomb shelters.

Now, longer range missiles hit Tel Aviv yesterday, landed on grass, no damage.   This is unusual as the regular GRAD missiles can reach a maximum of 40Km, so these are a different breed of weapon.

Today after I went home from work, an alarm sounded at about 16:45 – Jerusalem just had its first rocket attack in a long time.

After just getting on my shoes, coat and keys, me and my room mate ran downstairs to see most people hovering on the stairs that go into the basement where a large heavy door that has our bomb shelter is.

Having a bomb shelter is a legal requirement for all homes and businesses here.

Not many of my neighbours came in actually.   There were Ethiopian Jews, Russian Jews, one British lady and the rest of our block I think are sabra Israelis.  I have not seen on my neighbours together so this brought out a community spirit.  The elderly Ethiopian lady in her traditional clothing look noticeably in tears.

Across the road are two houses with Arab families which will having to deal this threat as well.   Something the mainstream news never really mentions.

This large room has some of other peoples stuff here, and someone painted some cartoon pictures on the wall, which actually makes the place look worse, like some kind of communist era prison.   This is an awful place to be, it feels like a prison and the toilets are grim, and a water tank is empty.  Actually I have to bring back some bottles of water which have to keep handy for disaster planning reasons.

I didn’t hear any explosions but there were some (maybe 2 or 3) from the west part of the city which friends told me online.

As today is Shabbat, the holiest day for Jewish people, this is a deliberate effort to frighten and worry people in the most holy city on earth.   There is a worry more attacks could happen (Saturday, the remaining part of Shabbat)   but we need to keep praying for safety and for a swift end to this war.   I know civilians in Gaza are no doubt going to be also stuck in the middle of this with possibly tragic consequences.

I have no desire to leave back to the UK, nor does anyone I know out of the three dozen Christian ministries I know that is here, we will continue to help this nation by prayer and in physical assistance.

Nov 15 2012

Israel now threatened by 75km missiles

This blog has been quiet for a while, but life for me has been anything but.

Just reading today about new Iranian Fajr missiles which hit south part of Tel Aviv today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fajr-5

These things have upto 75km radius, most of Israel is now under threat.    Already we had GRAD missiles which can hit Sderot, Beer Sheva, Ashdod and Ashkelon, and a new threat with attacks from Syria, which may have been a mistake from their own in fighting.

This country needs your prayers more than ever, but also the civilian population of Gaza which will inevitably get caught in the middle.

I will report soon on the measures my work and the government have recommended us to take.

 

Sep 28 2012

Sweet New Year

There been quite a few Jewish holidays happen in the last few weeks, one of them is new year.

We are now in the year 5773.   At my work, the food bank was working hard with not only regular food deliveries but also to provide apples and honey which is popular during Jewish new year to some of Israel’s most disadvantaged families here.   I got a jar of honey and some apples which I tend to stick on my cereal in the mornings.

Whilst I was staying the Galilee city of Tiberias which is on the coast of the Kinneret, the famous lake where Jesus did many of his ministry, I tried doing some walking around the edge of the lake.   Not that close to the lake mind you, only small part of it has beaches open for public use.

But, this path on the side of the road I thought was public, but led to a dead end:

I came across this, no less than 40 hives on this hill next to the main road, I didn’t get too close there are actual bees here.

The Galilee area is quite famous for its vibrant active agricultural industry here.   On the direct opposite part of the lake I see many banana plantations there.   Close to here there were many orchards of oranges here too.    I am not quite sure what flowers the bees get to pollinate though.

 

 

Sep 21 2012

Galilee Arab children to learn Jesus’s language of Aramaic

Saw this today which seemed interesting in Israel Today magazine:-

Jish, an Arab town in the Galilee only 2 miles away from the Lebanese border has got the go ahead from the Israeli government to teach children the ancient obscure Aramaic language that was used during the time of Jesus.

The only Aramaic words I know is Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani?  (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?) as spoken by Jesus in Matthew 27:46

The first three words are almost the same as their Hebrew counterpart, but the last word sounds quite a lot different and not like Hebrew at all.

Only a few communities in Syria speak Aramaic as far as I know, I did see sometime ago amongst Lebanese Christians there was a Facebook group campaign to teach children there Aramaic.

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/tabid/178/nid/23382/language/en-US/Default.aspx?ref=newsletter-20120910

Fascinating stuff, but I take joy that our loving saviour speaks the language of anyone from any country that calls on him.

 

Sep 19 2012

Megiddo – The end of the world welcomes careful drivers

After traveling this part of northern Israel before in the Jezreel Valley, famous for where the end of the world will happen, I got a chance after I finished working for a few days in nearby Karmiel to actually have a proper visit of this historical site.

I came not to speculate at the very place the book of revelation says the last battle will happen, but to make sense of a particular scripture I have read that I have been trying to make sense of:

Zechariah 12:10-12

10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son. 11 On that day the weeping in Jerusalem will be as great as the weeping of Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. 12 The land will mourn, each clan by itself, with their wives by themselves: the clan of the house of David and their wives, the clan of the house of Nathan and their wives

Question; this future prophesied repentance and revival is parallel with a place and/or event in history of the “Hadad Rimmon”, I am curious what this is, and why it is after some searching, no one knows what it is.

My primitive knowledge of Hebrew tells me that Rimmon is a pomegranate, but thats all I know.  By going to the Megiddo historical centre I thought maybe I could shed light on this.

I had to ask the manager of my youth hostel how to get to Megiddo,which advised getting the bus to Tel Aviv.   Megiddo is not mentioned on the bus stop schedules, I had to ask the bus driver to let me off at the right time.    Actually I had to get off at a bus stop at the side of the highway and walk for a mile, along this junction to the visitor centre.

By the main road is a large prison.   There has been some talk of tearing it down and rebuilding elsewhere as more significant archeological discoveries were found not long ago – possibly the oldest Christian church ever found.

 
The end of the world welcomes careful drivers….

I had my iPod with me and I was in the mood for some 80s rock, so I had this apt track from Def Leppard’s ‘Armageddon it’   its funny that Armageddon which is derived from Ha Megiddo, has become quite common in language as a modern phrase for any big impending war.

Anyway, once at the outside of the visitor centre I just paid 28 shekels to go in.

I found out that Megiddo became an Israelite city sometime between the 10th and 9th centuries BC and functioned as an administrator centre for the fertile Jezreel Valley, many parts were added later.

 

These drawings on the walls I think are from Canaanite period.   The drawing of a giraffe is quite interesting, didn’t think there was those here in Israel, but then again there were lions in the bible which aren’t there now, there are a small number of wild cats, leopards in Negev but they are very rare.   On the right is a picture of the Pope which someone has scratched on graffiti in Hebrew.

From the top of the site you can see all across the Jezreel valley, the plain of Megiddo, a wide open space with a busy main road that goes to Afula.   There is two petrol stations and a McDonalds along the fields of Megiddo!!

There were mostly people in one big group here, so I was a bit cheeky and stood close to the historian who was speaking, as I think it costs extra to hire him to guide you.

Like a lot of other ancient parts of Israel like Masada, there is a complex underground system built to provide fresh water.   I went down the steps to see the tunnels.

>>> More on Megiddo on the next chapter…..

Sep 17 2012

Mount Tabor quick glance

Took a picture of this on the way on a bus road to my next destination;

This hill is Mount Tabor, also written as Mount Tavor, as the letters B and V are similar and both written as ב in Hebrew.   The glimpse I got was just limited to passing in a bus.

I’m in a road just coming out of the northern city of Afula, and the quite exciting thing about this place, is it considered to be the most likely place where Jesus went to the Mount of Transfiguration.

There is an Arab town at the foot of the hill, but from this road, I can’t see an obvious way up.   I definitely need to come here and see this properly next time I am working up this way.