Tag Archives: mount of olives

Aug 6 2015

My dinner with Canon Andrew White in Jerusalem

I met up with a friend of mine who asked me if I wanted to meet with her as she was off to see the legendary Canon Andrew White, the vicar of Baghdad.  So it was a pleasure to do this one one evening, and met with a few other British and American people involved with various different types of ministry in the middle east.

canon andrewAndrew has a knack for building relationships with Jews, Muslims and Christians from all over.   He spends a lot of time in Jordan these days with Arab Christians escaping with their lives from Iraq and Syria which are getting taken over by Islamic State.

A quick van ride with his Aramaic Christian driver, and we were on the Mount of Olives in the Seven Arches Hotel with its original 1970s interior 🙂

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This piece of rock is very very very hot……

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This was a type of cooking I have never seen before.   I don’t know if this is a middle east idea.   The Arab staff of this hotel brought out these dense concrete blocks with a piece of steak on it.    The block is baked in an oven and get so extremely hot, it aids cooking the steak, so you finish it off be rotating your piece of meat to the desired cooking time.

This was a really nice unexpected surprise during my two week trip in July 2015.

Aug 12 2012

Riding on a Colt

Zechariah 9:9 from the OT talks about a prophecy of a future Messiah of Israel:-

9 Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

In my neighbourhood I noticed this:-

This banner on the car says “Baruch ha ba melech moshiach”   in English:  Welcome to king of the messiah.

My thinking is the Ukrainian Rabbi fella (actually he died in about 1994) which some religious Jews think is the Moshiach and maybe someone’s interpretation of the scriptures here was the Moshiach would come on this Mitsubishi Colt!! *

Actually I do get Arab children coming up my street on a donkey sometimes.

The New Testament explains the fulfillment of this:-

Matthew 21

21 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”

4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

5 “Say to Daughter Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”

11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Talking of the Mount of Olives, further up this street is a park you can stand and see across Jerusalem.   This Google Streetmap below shows the Mount of Olives, you can see by the ‘whiter’ area of the hill, as it contains thousands of graves.

* My mistake, this is actually a Mitsubishi Lancer.

Aug 2 2012

Judah’s visit to Jerusalem

This is my friend Judah Gabriel Himango, he is a fellow believer from the US I have known for about a year or so, we are quite similar sharing a keenness for problems solving in IT, although Judah is a web designer and programmer.

Hes likes to use his coding skills not just at his regular job, but also to serve the Lord, which one of these is his excellent Chavah Radio site an online radio station with Hebrew worship muisc, listeners can just hear what being played and add their own choices of songs to be played next.    Judah is using the same web site model to providing Arabic worship music to Egyptian Christians too, as well as other web sites teaching on which guitar chords to play this type of music too.  I think radio has always had exciting potential for providing worship material and teaching to those who can’t get it.

As well as we have similar interests in biblical theology and technical things, Judah happened to be flying on over to Eretz Israel to do some IT training courses, so stopped off on the way to stay at my place in Jerusalem as he needed a place to stay and didn’t mind my couch, it was fun to show him around places, we must of done 8-10 miles of walking easily I think.

Here is Judah close to the Pillar of Absalom with the Mount of Olives in the background.   I like to often get several pictures to join together to make a panoramic image, but as they were at a slightly odd angle I couldn’t quite cut the edges without losing detail, so its left as it is 🙂

We saw the UN HQ near my house, the Haas promenade, many bits of the old city including Jaffa Gate, praying at the Kotel, bartering Arabic quarter, grab food, then off to my church King of Kings Jerusalem.

Here is the Golden gate again, this is the place where our Lord Jesus will come back according to scripture.   Doesn’t matter its bricked up  and has an Arab cemetery in front.    I am sure there are spiritual power tools to make a way through 🙂

While we were there, I have just noticed this sign, whats odd, is the bit that says the “last path” (up to the Mount of Olives) and the other one “Gate of Mercy”  I have not seen this before!  interesting clues of the future!

We had enough time to quickly show him around the ministry I work for at Bridges for Peace and the nice old historic building which belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Later we had dinner with our mutual brother in the Lord and wonderful musician Teddy Chadwick of Yerubilee blog who produces worship music on a harp.   A small country like Israel and things like Facebook frequently mean you find different groups of friends who know each other from wildly different places.   This bit was a new experience for me as this was a brand new Yemenite restaurant in Jaffa Street which I have never had food from Yemen before.  He later went off to see some of his family, then headed to Netanya to see other friends and do his IT training.

He is a terrific guy I finally met in the flesh and love his enthusiasm for sharing his love for the Lord and writing about his experiences.   We will stay in touch and hopefully meet again another time 🙂

Here’s some of his writings of his experiences:

http://judahgabriel.blogspot.co.il/2012/07/israel-liveblog-divine-presence-at.html http://judahgabriel.blogspot.co.il/2012/07/israel-liveblog-mt-of-olives-islamic.html http://judahgabriel.blogspot.co.il/2012/07/israel-liveblog-finding-my-brother-in.html http://judahgabriel.blogspot.co.il/2012/07/israel-liveblog-mediterranean-delights.html

Jul 23 2010

Priestly tombs

Took another visit to some of the tombs in between the outer walls of the old city and the Mount of Olives

This is Zechariah’s tomb

Here is the tomb of Absalom, King David’s rebellious son who got his hair stuck in a tree and was killed.  Both of these you can’t enter the gap underneath.   Apparently a lot of the stone work was unfinished and the back of the tomb the stones and not hewn as neatly as the front.

There are some more interesting caves and places to explore..

…but it appeared to be all closed and locked up when I was there.  Some ancient writing can be seen though if you have sharp eyes to look high up.

Jul 20 2010

Garden of Gethsemane

On Saturday morning, I went up to the Mount of Olives.  I have several pictures and writings from visits here before.  Here and here.

I wanted to go to the town of Bethany to see Lazarus’s tomb, a location of a miracle Jesus did, one of many of bringing people back from the dead.

On top of the Mount of Olives is an Arab district of the city and the dividing wall runs along the top of here.  Sadly after much searching, and I tried to ask a few people who all seem to give me different ideas, I was not able to find it, and I gave up and went home.   It seems from a taxi driver you have to go through the dividing wall, walking through there is not an option.   I decided to logistics of this seem awkward as seems that the taxi driver has to hang around outside to take you back, or get several taxis one to the dividing wall and another one on the other side in East Jerusalem.

I was originally hoping to meet my Arab believer friend (he is an ex-Muslim) who lives up here, but was not able to get hold of him.   Instead I decided I would pay a visit to the Garden of Gethsemane at the bottom of the Mount of Olives, but this was closed on Saturday afternoon, so headed off home.  This reminded me I have some pictures of when I visited this place before late last year I thought I would share these from a previous visit.

The entrance in the side.   This box on the left was from a Arab trader selling camera film, memory cards and batteries.  The garden is free to visit and is always busy with tour groups from all over the world.

Where Jesus sweated and spent time in prayer.  These olive trees are apparently 900 years old!

This place is mentioned by Matthew and Mark, after Peter denied Jesus and the cockerel crowed, the last supper, and before Judas pointed out Jesus to the guards that arrested him.

Matthew 26 : 36 and Mark 14 : 32 specifically mention this place.  I did have some pictures of the insides of the church but not sure where I put them.  The outside of the church with its bright coloured muriels above the pillars as well as the beautiful gardens are really striking.   This is a must see place in Jerusalem.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+14:32&version=NIV