What an amazing day! We woke up at Bashara and Sarah’s house in Dvora and are calling it a day here at Judah’s house in Be’er Sheva, where his university is, Ben Gurion University. But how we arrived from one place to the other was marked by some truly rewarding places.

We felt very glad to have made it safely through the night. We were also hearing reports that the Jordan’s Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi, was landing in Iran to urge President Masoud Pezeshkian to not strike back at Israel. Besides that, there was no warning from the Israeli government to shelter in place and no urgent alerts.

We gathered around the breakfast table and read the words of Psalm 91.

Before I move on from Beit She’an, I’ll share a picture or two illustrating what archaeologists often find when they begin to excavate these places. Below is a picture of a single section of soil that was uncovered, showing pillars lying down. You can also see that if you continued to dig here you could go on straight down this little road and continue to unearth centuries of history.

The pillars are lying down because in the eighth century there was a huge earthquake in the region and much of the city fell into ruin and had to be rebuilt. In this case, those rebuilding it found it easier to simply bury the pillars rather than to get them standing again, so they raised the ground and built over the ruin. This is an even better example of it here:

The archaeology teams did not reset these pillars in order to illustrate what happened in the earthquake and how generation that rebuilt the city simply buried them and moved on. I guess that’s what you have to do sometimes when things don’t work out like you planned. Build on top of the ruin!

You wonder why they don’t finish the dig. Well, there are hundreds of tells (buried cities) left to excavate or finish excavating all over Israel and the middle east; there aren’t enough archaeology teams or funding in the whole world to get to it all.

By the way, the reason the area is prone to earthquakes is because the Jordan river is the dividing line between two tectonic plates. The western bank of the Jordan river is the African plate (a section of it called the “Dead Sea Rift”) and the eastern bank is the Arabian plate, and they are moving in opposite directions. It is also the reason that there has been volcanic activity in the region in the past, creating all of the black, basalt stone that we continue to see at these sites.

After this really amazing site, Judah made sure that we had what we needed because he said we would not be stopping for a little while because we were heading into the West Bank. That’s not a place that we want to explore right now! And, in fact, there are signs that warn that no Israeli citizens are allowed. But though the Palestinians control this portion of the West Bank, Israel controls the highway through it. And Israeli flags that dot the road along the way remind everyone of that fact. We went through the checkpoint without trouble. Judah always explains, “We’re American. I’m a student at Ben Gurion University. This is my father and this our friend (that’s me) visiting from America.” Whenever Judah says he’s studying at Ben Gurion, Israeli military personnel light up with delight, and when he says we’re American there is always some surprise (considering the times) but equal friendliness.

But there were some places we could stop in the West Bank. And one of them is the traditional place marked out where John the Baptist baptized those Jews who came to repent of their sins and prepare for God’s kingdom, and where Jesus was also baptized.

We turned off the main road and had to pass a checkpoint again, where they collect an entrance fee. But the guard asked, “Where are you from?” When Judah said, “America,” the guard literally shouted in surprise, “America!” and threw open the gate. They didn’t even charge us. And at a site where there are usually dozens of tourists, we were the only ones there the whole time we stayed, except for 2 men who walked up at some point and left, and a few military personnel who are guarding the site. So once again we virtually had the place to ourselves.

You would think that this was a very clear, beautiful river, a picturesque setting. After all, our Lord and Savior went down into the water to be baptized in this river! But it is not a lush green river bed with clear water, through it is usually greener in the winter and springtime when it’s not so hot (it was 100+ degrees yesterday). It is a small and muddy river at this point.

You likely remember in 2 Kings 5 how the Syrian general, Naaman, reacted when Elisha told him to bathe seven times in the Jordan in order to heal his leprosy. He said, “We have much better rivers in Syria than all the waters of Israel! Why can’t I wash there instead?” It must have been humiliating for Naaman to come down into this little, dirty-looking river and bathe himself as a tough general commanding an entire army. But he went seven times into the water and was cleansed.

The three of us stood together and reflected on the fact that John was baptizing people who were lining up on the shores and getting into the water in a line to be baptized, repenting of their sins. And John looked up and Jesus was in line! He didn’t come with a great importance like the Pharisees and Sadducees came, to inspect from a distance and evaluate the situation. But Jesus, who alone of all people had no sin to confess, got into the water with everyone else. And he urged a resistant John to baptize him so that he could identify with the people he came to save even in repentance, as a part of fulfilling “all righteousness.” We reflected on the “active obedience” of Jesus, how he went before us so that we could know repentance and obedience and righteousness through him.

I should also tell you that across the riverbed at this point is the country of Jordan. There was actually a small group of friendly, Jordanian tourists who appeared on the other side for about five minutes. You can see the Jordanian flag in this photo.

Well, after reading the account of the baptism in Matthew 3 and having a time of prayer, we retreated from the banks of the Jordan and did what Jesus did after his baptism: we headed into the wilderness! Only, we weren’t going for the purpose of being tempted by Satan in particular. We were going to visit the historic site of Qumran.

Many of you know that Qumran is the name of a place where the purist sect of the Essenes lived in the wilderness because they believed that the priests and the temple system in Jerusalem had become corrupt. So they decided to live out in the wilderness and wait for the Messiah to come. Well, they should have saved themselves the trouble. They lived in this remote region by the Dead Sea, waiting for the Messiah during the entire time Jesus ministered in Galilee and Jerusalem. They were finally driven out when the Roman army invaded prior to the time when Jerusalem was destroyed in AD70.

In the first picture above you can see the rugged terrain in the wilderness with the Dead Sea in the background. This is not unlike the wilderness that Jesus would have walked in during his temptation. And as we discovered, the sun can be brutal and the place is very dry and dusty. The other picture is one example of the dwellings of the Essenes as they lived in a tight community with rules that governed their behavior. They were a strict and dedicated sect.

But one thing that the Essenes gave to us were scrolls of Scripture and other Jewish literature. Beginning in the mid-1940s through the mid-1950s some of the scrolls were accidentally discovered in a cave high above in the cliffs, and the area was excavated and more caves with scrolls and scroll fragments were discovered. It was a bedouin shepherd boy who was throwing rocks inside a cave opening who made the first discovery. He heard something break inside the cave and figured out a way to climb up and investigate. Besides the famous Isaiah scrolls, which were 1000 years earlier than the earliest copies we had previously, copies or fragments from every other OT book except Esther was found there.

Really there is not much to see here except some great views of the Dead Sea and a closer view of some of the caves where the Essenes hid their manuscripts. But you have to take a challenging climb up the mountain with long, sheer drop-offs to get there. And no guardrails. Judah says, “That’s Israel for you! They’re not going to hold your hand!” But we were rewarded in the end by the views and it was great to see firsthand the site of one of the greatest archaeological finds for believers ever.

And, once again, we were literally the only visitors to this site the entire time we were there. You know how when you’re visiting a historical site or some place where you would love to get a picture, but there is always a random person you don’t know in the background? We really haven’t had to worry about that much on this trip!

We then continued on through the wildness (by car) and stopped to eat some great burgers at the south end of the Dead Sea. This restaurant was right on the water, so we walked to the edge hoping to at least bathe our feet in it. The water was so hot! It was like a bath. So I couldn’t help myself. I just kept walking and eventually floating.

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Some of you have floated in the Dead Sea before. It’s like being on air. You literally cannot make yourself sink. In fact, the hardest thing to do is to stand back up. The water pushes back against your legs when you try to put them down. So this was relaxing for a few minutes.

And finally we arrived at Judah’s temporary hometown of Be’er Sheva. Standing on a hillside before driving in we could look down on the part of the city where he lives, which is close to Ben Gurion University. Off in the distance, the lights you see on the righthand side of the picture below are right in front of Gaza.

We were able to see some of the buildings of Judah’s school and the medical center where he has done some of his work so far as we wound through the streets to the house he is renting. All is still quiet in the nation right now. It was business as usual today for everyone. But if anything starts to happen there is an alert system and the government will tell everyone to shelter. Here in Be’er Sheva, there are friends close by from the U.S. who have a shelter that is highly protected, and they’ve already asked us to come over and stay there if anything should start to go down. Here in the south we would have plenty of time and advanced warning if that were to happen. Plus, every day we commit ourselves to God’s care.

All I know right now is that this room I’m staying in has great air conditioning and I’m getting very sleepppppppppppppppppppppppp