And on the Eighth Day...

After two nights in one hotel we packed up and and headed to where people say John the Baptist taught and baptized. It is hard to know this for sure, but they have excavated a church here which was in existence before 300 AD which probably means that this was the site because of the short time from when it happened to when a church was built there.

Anyway, now there is a brand new Catholic church there named the John Paul church for the work he did to get it built. The church is pretty impressive but the Jordan River is not, it is just a muddy stream when it reaches the Dead Sea.



Next we travelled to the Jordanian city of Jerash. Here there is a beautifully preserved Roman city. It is one of the cities which formed the decapolis, mentioned in the Bible. We spent time looking at the temples of Zeus and Herodotus. There is also a large Areopagus with columns all around it. Then there is a monument which is a large and elaborate fountain dedicated to Herodotus who is the god of the earth and fertility. The water poured into a granite bowl about eight feet in diameter. The granite for this bowl had to have come from Aswan, Egypt as this is the only source for it in this part of the world. We finished by looking at an intact stadium. It really reminded me of the movie "Gladiator".


Interestingly, this city was probably one of the cities that the healed demoniac visited to tell of the wonders of Jesus the Messiah who healed him. His witness must have been very profitable because within a hundred years of the building of this city it had several churches in it.


We spent the rest of the day traveling through Jordan to Israel. There it took us almost three hours to make the crossing as the security is very tight. We ended up at Kibitz Ged which is on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. We are getting closer and closer to Jerusalem.