JOHN059 - On a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land with Friends from 1700 Years Ago

John 1:28

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Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we are on a journey this week. We didn't make the route. Rather, some ancient pilgrims from Bordeaux and Aquitaine in France at the far northwestern edge of the Roman Empire, they decided that they wanted to go see where all the stuff happened with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the founding of the church. And so they set out to walk/slash ride all the way to the Holy Land, all the way across Europe. And they were kind enough to document the whole thing, every changeover, every roadmark, every town for future travelers like you and me. So yesterday, we started our pilgrimage from Bordeaux, France, all the way to the Holy Land. And yesterday, we ended looking into the distance, peering into the land where all of this stuff unfolded. We made camp overnight, and now today, finally, we arrive in the heart of the place where the Bible happened. And let's join the Bordeaux pilgrims and see what we can find. That got a little dramatic. Oh well, whatever. It's how I feel. It was worth it. I'm gonna have Jeff play some music, and then we're going to the Holy Land. Here we go. Let's just step back for a minute. For the sake of the podcast, why are we here? Why are we doing this? Well, one reason is because it's interesting, and I try to talk with you about things that are interesting that are inspired by what I'm encountering in the text. One of the beauties of this format is we really can chase down anything at all. All the stuff that if you go to church that you hear the pastor say, Oh man, there's this really interesting story behind this, but that's a story for another day. Well, there's never another day. There's never like a day where your church is like, everybody, come on in. We're gonna do all 10 interesting stories I alluded to. It's gonna take all day. We're gonna be here for like 10 hours, but you're gonna love all of these side jaunt stories. I have it all prepared for you. It's not because pastors are doing a good job. They're doing a lovely job. It's just the format of the church and stuff, it just doesn't allow for it. So I guess you could maybe go to seminary or go get a master's degree in history or something if you wanted that stuff. But who has time for that? Well, I'll tell you who has time for that. Me and you in this format. So from time to time, when I come across interesting things like this, I'm like, well, we're just gonna do it because where else is it gonna happen? So that's one reason I'm telling you about this. But the thing that inspired this pilgrimage that we're ostensibly or vicariously joining the Bordeaux travelers on is just John 1.28 and an old debate about a lost location that got covered over by the sands of time. And it says this in John 1.28 about where John the Baptist was baptizing. It said, This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan where John was baptizing. Well, you kind of hope like somebody maybe wrote that down. Clearly, the original audience knew what that meant. And clearly John knew that if he wrote that down with those words, there'd be a whole bunch of people in his audience who were like, oh yeah, not the main Bethany, the Bethany on the other side of the Jordan. Sure, I can picture it. I've been out there a couple times. I got a cousin who goes out there like on weekends and stuff and does like the Lake Beach routine at the Dead Sea. Yeah, that's cool. I know the place. All right, so he's baptizing out there. Continue with your story. But then enough time passes, and nobody remembers where that is. Politics or flooding, or I don't know, it just stuff happens and it gets lost. So one of the things that I wanted to know is well, I remember that the earliest pilgrimage record here was from like the 300s AD. Where did they think John was baptizing people in the 300s AD? What did they remember? And that's what jogged my memory about this pilgrimage thing, and that's why we're here now. Okay, so we're with the Bordeaux travelers. We have made it to the Holy Land, and this is what we get. We've just arrived in Caesarea of Palestine, and here the traveler says, There is the bath of Cornelius, the centurion, who gave many alms. I didn't know he had a bath. That's in Acts 10, where we hear, I mean, that's like a giant moment where it is confirmed miraculously with Peter and everybody standing right there, that Gentiles can become Christians. They receive the same miraculous presence of the Holy Spirit as Jewish believers do. That's pretty cool that there's some sort of living memory or or archaeological memory of Cornelius at this point. Then we go south a little bit to the city of Istradella. It says there King Ahab ruled, and Elijah prophesied. There is the field where David killed Goliath. I think that field is probably somewhere else. But, you know, this isn't like the inspired word of God or anything. This is a dude without Google Maps doing his best with local memory to be like, Well, what's that? Where's that? Do you know where this happened? What stories do you all remember around here about Bible stuff? Then he goes to Asher and notes that this is where the villa of Job was located. Really? I mean, Job is so, so, so, so old, even by this point. I mean, Job could have been a couple thousand years or more old by the time that this itinerary was written. Is there really some kind of custody there, some mental custody that that's where Job was from and that's where like the building collapsed and everything? I mean, it could be. Now we go south a little bit. Um, there is Mount Gerizim. The Samaritans say that Abraham offered to sacrifice there, and the number of steps is 1,300, which go up to the Mount Summit. That's interesting. That particular mountain also factors into an incident with Pontius Pilate where he dispatched soldiers to go peaceably break up a false messiah movement, and they didn't do it very peacefully. Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim make a kind of a valley together. It's a really important place. So it's fascinating that this guy's journey went through there. It should go through there. Any proper pilgrimage would. Okay, of course, at the foot of the mountain is the place whose name is Shechem. That's a gigantic deal for the history of the covenant in the Old Testament. There's a tomb where Joseph is buried in a villa, which his father Jacob gave to him. Interesting. There, Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, was seized by the sons of the Amorites. That's a very graphic Old Testament story. A mile from there is a place by the name of Sikar, where the Samaritan woman went down to that place where Jacob had dug a well. Maybe that's where Jacob's well is. I mean, it's geographically, it's in the right neighborhood. That's the John 4 story that we haven't gotten to yet, but pretty famous one, the woman at the well. Then the traveler goes 28 miles from there to Jerusalem. This traveler says that in that area there's a place where Jacob struggled with God. And that so that's where Jacob's name was changed to Israel, purportedly at that time. Uh, there was King Jeroboam, to whom a prophet was sent, and he converted to God on high, and he commanded to the prophet that he should eat with the false prophet whom the king had with him. And since he was led astray by the false prophet and ate with him, as he returned, a lion met the prophet on the road and killed him. I have no idea on the geography there, but a fascinating note. Then we make it into Jerusalem. There are in Jerusalem two big pools on the side of the temple, that is one to the right and another to the left, which Solomon made, but inside there are two twin pools with five porches, which are called Beth Seda. Ooh, cool. Oh, and uh here it is. There, those who've been sick for many years have been healed. These pools have water which becomes scarlet when disturbed. I'm sure microbiologists can have a field day speculating as to what a natural explanation for that might be. There is a crypt there where Solomon tortured demons. Okay. I mean, I'd love to pull on that thread more. That would make me want to go and take a long walk across the known world to find out what the heck that's about. There is the corner of the highest tower where the Lord went up as he said to the one who was tempting him. Okay, so I don't know if that's accurate or not, because the temple was destroyed here, but there was apparently local suggestion that you could still see at least part of where during the temptation Satan took Jesus up to a high place on the temple. And he goes on, there is the cornerstone about which it is said, stone which the builders reproved. This has been made the head stone or the cornerstone. And under the pinnacle of the tower, there are many chambers where Solomon had his palace. Seeing as I mean, there's too much here for me to read you literally everything that's left, but I bet you're not bored, right? This is cool. This dude went there and he wrote down what the locals said was there. How much of it's true or accurate? I don't know. 300 years is a long time, but also things weren't as dynamic back then. They didn't change as quickly in terms of stuff getting overhauled and redeveloped and bought out by, you know, investment companies that have huge money to reimagine downtowns and cities. There's a lot more stability back then. So who knows? Maybe a lot of this is legit. And so this guy goes to the Mount of Olives. He says that not far from the spot where Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ, about a stone's throw from there were built two monumental tombs of marvelous beauty. In one was late Isaiah the prophet, which is really a slab, and in another, Hezekiah, king of the Jews. Yeah, interesting. From there you go to the Mount of Olives. There's a basilica that's made there on Constantine's command. I mean, this is written in 333. Constantine, like that was a brand new basilica. Takes a while to build those. I mean, that must have been just absolutely minty and fresh and brand new, dazzling to look at. Not far from there is a little hill where the Lord went up to pray, and there appeared Moses and Elijah. So he's saying the Mount of Transfiguration is right there. Most scholars do not think the Mount of Transfiguration is right there. Then, ah, this ties us back in with John 1. From there to the east, about a mile and a half, is a villa which is called Bethany. There is the crypt where Lazarus was laid, whom the Lord raised. That's John 11. And that's nowhere near a baptismal site near the Jordan at all. So, you know, this itinerary confirms what we know from a whole bunch of other sources that the Bethany that comes up, particularly later in Jesus' ministry, cannot be the Bethany where the baptism is happening. All right, now we're going down to Jericho. Jerusalem's up high. You kind of descend down through some bad lands down toward below sea level, Dead Sea, Jordan River area. That's how you get to Jericho. So from Jerusalem down to Jericho is 17 miles. Coming down the mountain on the right side behind the tomb is a sycamore tree in which Zacchaeus went up and he saw Christ. I have heard rumors that there is a sycamore tree there that has been around for a very long time, and that people even still say, that's the sycamore tree right there. Well, I mean, maybe it's a descendant of the sycamore tree. I don't know how long do sycamore trees live. But I my understanding is it's reasonable that that could have been the same tree that Zacchaeus went up that this the traveling party would have encountered. That's pretty cool. There was the city of Jericho, around whose walls the Israelites with the Ark of the Covenant marched and the walls fell down. From that, nothing is left of the place where the Ark of the Covenant was, but twelve stones which the Israelites carried across the Jordan. Could that possibly have been the twelve stones that were stacked up, right, when Joshua took charge of things and they crossed the Jordan River? Uh, I don't know, but maybe if they got knocked over, people kept stacking them up because it was an important historical thing. Maybe somebody, maybe they had people who like preserved monuments like we have today. And a monument or like a ghost town or something might not be exactly what it was, but you have maybe a class of people who are like archivists and they understand this thing right here is really important. Maybe even back then there were custodians of that stuff who did their best to keep it intact the way they found it from generation to generation. Now I know at this point we're all dying to get to the part of the pilgrimage where we go to where Jesus was baptized. I mean, that's how we got here. We're in John 1. This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan where John was baptizing. Where is it? Well, tomorrow, first thing, we're gonna get up in the morning after making camp, and we're gonna go to the place where, at least as the Bordeaux pilgrims understood it, that happened. And when we get there, their records are going to tip us off to something that I didn't catch in the biblical text, but that is a geographic clue that helps us make sense of what we're seeing in John 1 with the questions about Elijah and John the Baptist and how all of this fits together with Old Testament prophecy. We're gonna get just a glaring line in the Bordeaux pilgrimage tomorrow. But tonight, we make camp. Tomorrow we get up, and at break of day, we'll go see the place where Jesus was baptized. All right, let's turn in. I'll see you in the morning. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.