Caesarea Philippi - Monday, 4/8/08

Tel Dan would have been an exciting enough day in and of itself. After we left there we went to Hagoshrim Kibbutz for lunch. I was not familiar with the kibbutz part of Israeli life. Even before Israel was officially declared a nation in 1948, it was being settled by many Jews escaping the pogroms of Russia and the Holocaust of Germany. Those people leaving eastern Europe did not know much about farming and how to scrape out a living in this area. Being used to the developing socialist governments of eastern Europe, they settled in groups and to this day have practiced a form of communal living. I won't go into a lot of detail here but it was fascinating to listen to different Israelis share their opinions about the kibbutz lifestyle. It has its advantages and disadvantages but overall, in my opinion, being raised in the wonderful capitalist country of America, I would have to say I'm against them. Primarily, I would have to draw the line at having my children live in the "Children's Home" and not with Jimmy and I in our house. Nevertheless, they served us a fabulous lunch. Here is a picture of one of the guides explaining the kibbutz lifestyle outside of a kibbutz duplex.

To the point of this posting, after lunch we went on to Caesarea Philippi. This pagan place of worship is located at the source of the River Baniass which is yet another of the three tributaries for the Jordan River. This is the location where Matthew 16:13-20 took place.

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples,

"Who do people say the Son of Man is?"

They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah;

and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."

"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.

Having seen Caesarea Philippi, these verses are alive with little tidbits of meaning. The temple ruins we visited have areas dedicated to each of the Greek gods. The god Pan was their patron deity. (Baniass comes from Paniass; the name was changed by the Muslims in the early centuries AD as the /P/ sound is not part of their language.) They also had altars to Zeus, Nemesis, Nymph, and others. I can just picture Christ coming into this area where all of these pagan altars were and saying, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" In other words, do people think I'm one of these false gods? Regardless of what they say, "Who do you think that I am?" Let's put it into personal terms: "Who do you say that He is?" He is Jesus the Christ, Yeshua HamaShiach. The passage gets even more interesting though. This land, especially in the north country is covered with rocks. Rocks are everywhere. For those of you involved in the building of our house and all the rocks we encountered...that's nothing compared to what you see here. The temple at Caesarea Philippi is the most amazing and massive single rock structure we have seen yet. It's huge. The temple is carved directly into the rock. What better place for Jesus, after Peter's confession of belief, to say, "You are Peter, (Greek "petros": a rock or stone) and," pointing to Himself, "upon this rock (Greek "petra": a rock, cliff, or ledge) I will build my church." Then, sweeping His arm towards the temple and altars and massive structures, finishing by saying, "and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." I don't know if the massiveness of the structure comes across in this picture but hopefully you get the idea...