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THIS WAS TO BE
our last full day at the Sea of
Galilee, and we wanted to hit
some of the spots we hadn't seen
yet, most of them very close to
our lodgings in Ginosar.
After
getting lost on winding hillside
roads several times, we finally
found the traditional site of
the Mount of the Beatitudes,
where the ordination of the
twelve took place according to
Christian tradition.
This
spot, which did not exactly fit
our Urantia Book description as
to location (but maybe we were
wrong!), was now thoroughly
commercialized, not a trace left
of what Jesus might have seen or
left behind, and all
professionally landscaped.
Several born-again Christian
groups were vying for space,
mostly American. We found a
quiet bench and read aloud to
each other from our Urantia
Books:
Just before
noon on Sunday, January 12, A.D.
27, Jesus called the apostles
together for their ordination as
public preachers of the gospel
of the kingdom. . . . [H]e first
hailed Andrew and Peter, who
were fishing near the shore;
next he signaled to James and
John, who were in a boat near
by, visiting with their father,
Zebedee, and mending their nets.
Two by two he gathered up the
other apostles, and when he had
assembled all twelve, he
journeyed with them to the
highlands north of Capernaum,
where he proceeded to instruct
them in preparation for their
formal ordination. [1568]
* * *
From
here we took some roads that
meandered through the towns and
villages in the highlands,
including some of the places in
which Jesus and the apostles
preached and taught.
First
was Chorazin,
now just a pile of dark stones
and rocks.
"Woe upon
you, Chorazin!"
[In Chorazin]
they spent almost a week
preaching the good news; but
they were unable to win many
believers for the kingdom in
Chorazin. In no place where
Jesus had taught had he met with
such a general rejection of his
message. [1644]
Peter and the
evangelists sojourned in
Chorazin for two weeks,
preaching the gospel of the
kingdom to a small but earnest
company of believers. But they
were not able to win many new
converts. No city of all Galilee
yielded so few souls for the
kingdom as Chorazin. [1726]
* * *
From there we moved on to
Bethsaida-Julias,
an enormous tel now under
excavation and a place where
Jesus and the apostles had done
much preaching but which had
also rejected the teachings.
Bethsaida-Julias as seen from
the Sea of Galilee
Then,
speaking to all the
disciples, he said: "You have
heard how many cities and
villages have received the good
news of the kingdom, and how my
ministers and teachers have been
received by both the Jew and the
gentile. And blessed indeed are
these communities which have
elected to believe the gospel of
the kingdom. But woe upon the
light-rejecting inhabitants of
Chorazin, Bethsaida-Julias, and
Capernaum, the cities which did
not well receive these
messengers. . . ." [1744]
By now
we had so many maps in use that
we were beginning to see the
need for a layered map, one with
the oldest names, an overlay
with today’s names, and another
layer with Urantia Book page
number references.
* * *
Done
with sightseeing, we went into
Tiberias to buy foodstuffs. Our
homemade meals were consisting
mainly of bread with various
sandwich toppings made at the
table right outside our room,
which had become our favorite
“sitting” place.
Looking forward to preparing our
last picnic, we returned to find
two noisy young Israeli couples
occupying our table, forcing us
to move out on to the lawn,
where we sat reading and talking
until the sun went down.
Afterwards we went to the
restaurant for a last drink, and
at 8:30 attended a slide
presentation about kibbutz
living. A Dutch woman, who had
been married for 22 years to a
kibbutzer, gave the talk. The
audience was comprised mainly of
American tour groups, mosty
gray-haired retired couples.
(Here more than anywhere else I
began to notice that Americans
are becoming a separate
race—even physically they can be
distinguished from other groups
of westerners, even at a
distance.)
The
kibbutz talk held our interest
because it showed their
problems, with older members
dying out and the younger
generation wanting to move out
and try their luck in the
outside world. As only the
non-adventurous mediocre types
will remain, the leadership will
have to come from without, as
they pointed out has already
happened with their banana
plantation.
This
particular kibbutz, however,
seemed to be thriving, with 80%
of their revenues coming from
the tourist trade, the rest from
their banana plantation and
their fishery. (The next morning
I asked our maid, a girl in her
teens who had been born here, if
she planned to live on the
kibbutz the rest of her life.
Her answer was vague, but she
told us that most young people
marry outside the kibbutz and
move away.)
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