Day 5

Today we went to the Jordan River early in the morning. Several people in our group were baptized in this same river where John the Baptist baptized Jesus, including Ben! The water was freezing, but it was well worth the experience. One of the pictures is of the Jordan River, taken from the spot where Ben was baptized.

We traveled to Bet She'an which is huge site of ancient Roman ruins. It is also the site where Saul and his sons were killed and hung on the wall. The picture of the ruins is of an amphitheatre at Bet She'an.

Afterwards we had lunch at a local mall where I ate at a Kosher McDonalds! (Ben, of course, was much healthier and had a falafel pita.) Much to my dismay, you could not get cheese on your cheeseburger because that wouldn't be kosher! There was a seperate kitchen where you could order the sundaes and ice cream cones but still no cheese!

The afternoon took us on a drive along the Jordanian border, again complete with fences and mine fields. There is a dirt perimeter road along the fence that the Israel authorities search once a day for footprints to make sure that no one has managed to cross illegally. There is a picture of the border fence and you can see the dirt road on my side of the fence and the mine fields in the buffer zone behind the fence. The hills are in Jordan.

We drove past the Judean Wilderness, where Jesus was tempted for 40 days and nights to arrive at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest known account of the bible (Old Testament) ever to be found, dating back before Jesus walked the earth. We continued our drive down to the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth at 1290ft below sea level!

The part that I found most amazing about this region is that the ancient civilizations of Sodom and Gomorrah are believed to lay somewhere in the Dead Sea Valley, perhaps under the Sea itself. The Dead Sea has extraordinary amounts of minerals in it, namely sulfur and salt. The account of the cities being destroyed by God is in Genesis 19. It just so happens that God destroyed the cities by raining down "burning sulfur" on them and when Lot's wife looked back, as God had instructed her not to, she was turned into a pillar of salt. It is too much for me that this most unusual sea filled with sulfur and salt lies over a place where a city was destroyed by sulfur and a woman was turned to salt. Amazing!