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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.
The Church of the Beatitudes
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]
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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.
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A small section of our handy Bible map
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First was
Chorazin, now just a pile
of dark stones and rocks.
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[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]
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"Woe upon you, Chorazin!"
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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
The remains currently being uncovered
| 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]
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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.
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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.)
click
on the map below for a great website
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CLICK
HERE TO RETURN TO CALENDAR
or
read on by clicking on any of the following
links:
1.
From Los Angeles to Amsterdam
2. The Flight to Greece
3. Ancient
Corinth
4. The
Citadel
5. To Piraeus
6. Hania on
Crete
7. A
Day in Limbo
8. Back
to Athens
9. From
Athens to Cairo
10. Cairo
11. The Pyramids
12. The Bus to Israel
13. Jerusalem
14. Bethany and Bethpage
15. An Old Palestinian Hotel
16. The Drive to Galilee
17. Capernaum and Environs
18. The Ancient Boat and Nazareth
19. The Golan Heights and Mt. Hermon
20. The Eastern Shore and Scythiopolis
21. Mount of the Beatitudesthis
page
22. Ptolemais and Caesarea
23. A Day in Piraeus
24. Santorini
25. A Rainy Day
26. An Eventful Day in Athens
27. Return to Amsterdam
28. Going Home
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