In this must see Sunday Special, Jack Posobiec is joined by his brother Kevin Posobiec to discuss their experiences after spending a week in the Holy Land, Israel. From the Dead Sea to the Golan Heights, the Poso Brothers traveled far and wide. Jack and Kevin engage in an educational conversation about archeology, the preservation of the Bible, and the Dead Sea Scrolls with some minor notes about demigods. Jack provides the background and prophecies regarding sites like Armageddon and the Sea...
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard for a special edition of Human Events, the Human Events special, The Holy Land.
Kevin and I are here in downtown Jerusalem, and we've just spent one week here in The Holy Land together, and the rest of the family was with us, the boys, My wife, the beautiful and lovely Tanya Tay, my parents, got him out, even got dad, we even got dad off the couch, you know, got him in.
He came out and he walked and climbed all over, all over every site we took him to here like a champ, like an absolute champ.
Great with the kids, everything else, but we've just wrapped that up and before...
Before we wanted to go, right?
Yep, to my sister.
And before we wanted to go, we wanted to sit down and really have a discussion for the show.
We've been filming things along the way, so we'll be able to show you some of those experiences that we had, but really give you an understanding of why it was that we came to the Holy Land, what we experienced while we were here.
Some of the, of course, if you remember when we went to Ukraine, I focused more on the political-military situation, whereas Kev focused more on sort of what was going on the ground.
How are supplies run?
How do people live?
How are things built and rebuilt and the construction and all of this?
And of course that's still going on as we record this.
Even the city of Mykolaiv, where we visited, is still under attack as of right now.
But This time around we had the opportunity, thanks to Turning Point USA, to bring us to the Holy Land.
So I'm so gracious for Turning Point for having the ability to help us out with that.
So essentially what we did was a Figure 8, if you want to think of it that way.
We sort of did the Dead Sea, then up to Galilee, then back down to the site of Christ's baptism, and then back across to Jerusalem for the end.
So let's say, so now I've been here once before, just to set the stage.
So Tanya and I did our honeymoon here in Israel.
But Kevin, this is your first time to the Middle East.
Sure is.
At all.
So you should tell me, what was it like What was it like just getting off the airplane, getting in the car, and driving across the desert that first night?
Because we drove the first night all the way from the airport in Tel Aviv, Bangorian Airport, all the way to the Dead Sea.
And then we slept on the shores of the Dead Sea that first night.
Well, I tell you, I mean, we've done so much on this adventure, it's hard to even recall, actually.
But the trip driving over was great.
Like a blur.
Yeah, like a blur.
It feels like I've been here like a month.
And a lot of people were actually saying that, too.
But that's great.
I mean, driving over, though, it was pretty beautiful.
I mean, clear skies, the stars were out.
And you could tell we were definitely in the desert.
Not too much light pollution there.
No light pollution.
Nope.
But yeah, it was a lot of fun driving over.
And of course, I cranked.
It felt like when we were in Denver or California.
It wasn't like the Swiss Alps, but you could see the rolling hills.
It was night.
Yeah, it was night time, of course.
However, the one difference was that I found whatever Jordanian radio channel I could find, then plugged it in and cranked it all the way to the max the entire two hours of the drive.
I had no idea what they were saying.
I have a theory that it's actually all just one song on a loop.
That was my theory.
It's like house music, you know, where they just do the one song and it's loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop.
And of course Dad's sitting there.
You got rhythm, you got rhythm.
Oh yeah, Dad in the car too.
That was the whole experience.
What are you stopping here for?
No, turn.
No, go this way.
No, go that way.
What are you doing?
The backseat driver.
The definition.
If any of you guys out there have a Polish dad or, you know, a Slavic father, you'll know exactly what it is.
Totally.
Like, yeah, no dad, I'm good.
I got Captain Google right here.
He's taking care of me.
Got the SIM card.
Been here before, as a matter of fact.
So, you know, I have a basic idea of my bearings.
Stubborn.
Stubborn as a rusty nail, I guess.
Exactly.
He just got his hip replaced.
I'm like, Dad, you want to sit up front?
Like, I asked him like three times.
He's like, no.
No, he wouldn't do it.
No, he wouldn't do it.
He wouldn't sit up front.
But he would keep complaining.
Yes.
Oh, my knee.
Oh, it's so cramped back here.
I said, Dad, because when we stop, So we finally stopped.
The first place we stopped cutting across the... So we finally stopped at Beersheba, the first place, which was, of course, where Abraham dug the well.
It was a watering hole back in those times, back in biblical times.
And in a sense, it kind of still is today because that's your main stop while you're going across the desert.
So I thought that was interesting.
It made me think a lot about how... So when you come to the Holy Land, you actually traverse this terrain, it gives you an understanding of the Bible that it's hard to have without having this tactile feel of what it actually means to cross the desert of Samaria, what it means to go from Galilee to Judea to Jerusalem, to come from Nazareth, to be in Bethlehem, right?
This idea that, you know, when you're coming through a desert, And there's only one well, you know, of course, everybody's going to be fighting over that.
Of course, that's going to be extremely important.
It's going to be something that it makes sense, right?
So it makes sense why that well or Jerusalem or some of the other main sites have become so many friction points back then, even as, in a sense, as they still are today.
Maybe not for the same exact reasons, but early on, You really get that understanding of the whole Jordan River Valley, and then some of these wells, some of these areas where you could have, could have water, could have any, just any kind of sustenance.
Because you gotta imagine, they're not, you know, they're not driving the Mazda, or I don't even remember what we had, all the way through the desert.
They had nothing.
They had camels, they had donkeys, and that's it.
Horses?
Not really.
Probably not.
So you're just traveling through, that's all you got.
So it gives you more of an appreciation too for understanding, for us it was a long night.
But imagine them actually having to sleep out there.
But then again, that's where the desert fathers were.
Right.
From the book of Hebrews.
Exactly.
Where they gained much of their wisdom and experience.
Well you learn a lot, right?
And there were some days where You know you couldn't even compare it but just some days where we were out walking a lot and getting up maybe we should we should even talk about the next the next we'll talk about in a second but what it was like Getting a little taste of that, just a little taste of that.
Nothing, nothing major, but what was it like when, I remember, because we stayed in that guest house that we found on the Dead Sea, and I don't think you realized how close we were when you woke up.
So what was it like waking up, stepping outside the front door of the courtyard, turning right, and then boom, palm trees, the Dead Sea is sitting right there, Jordan across in the mountains.
Yeah, it was it was breathtaking.
I mean, honestly, I went out the night.
That's right.
You went out the night off.
It was a full moon.
I brought my rosary with me.
Went out on this little man-made peninsula.
Watched the guys working and I got to see all like the calcified rocks along the shoreline.
It was pretty moving.
And the wind was blowing.
Very romantic.
I get a criticism of that.
I'm a romantic kind of guy.
The atmosphere was very special and moving.
But yeah, I just took my time out there.
And prayed, and it felt very different.
And that's kind of the theme of this whole trip.
You can ask the whole group.
Everybody is saying, like, this is a lot different than any other previous event.
There's like a spirit in the air.
Absolutely.
And even there, that's the lowest point, the Dead Sea, the lowest surface point on the face of the earth.
That you can walk, and then that sea of course doesn't hold anything, but in the southern end, we were staying on the southern end, and they actually have a lot of excavation that goes on there to get the salt out.
Yeah.
So that you get it up, and that's what we saw was dredgers and excavators, and they were just pulling the salt out.
Yeah, I didn't read too much about that yet, but there's apparently some work being done now to convert it to energy.
There is.
I forget the name of it, but that came up as I was So they've divvied up with Jordan, who's on the other side, and they're finding ways to actually try to turn that into electric plants.
Because of course, energy, just like before, living in the desert has its own set of realities that you have to figure out if you're going to spend time out there.
It's unlike any other body of water I've ever been in.
I put my hand in and it felt like there's like, there's, remember back in the day there's machines like you put your hand in and it like covers it in wax?
No.
Okay, well.
What were you doing covering your hand in wax?
A lot of things.
Okay.
But it just felt like oil, or like hyssop, anointing oil.
What else did you get waxed, Kev?
What else did you get waxed?
Well, I got something on my shoulder last night.
Yeah, I know you got something.
I heard mom find out about that.
You might have to subscribe to get to see that.
Subscribe, that's an Instagram exclusive?
Yeah.
Okay, did you actually film it?
A number of people did, yeah.
Oh boy, here we go.
Instagram exclusive, folks.
Coming out pretty soon.
Okay, I've got some new bumper stickers.
So we're coming through the Dead Sea, wake up, first morning, we're there.
And I think we got a great photo actually of mom and dad just sort of walking towards the Dead Sea and I just thought it was great for them, for everybody and then I would say this for the rest of the trip but You gotta come at least once.
You gotta come at least once, see it, experience it, walk those stones, see those places.
There's so many variables.
Everywhere is so close to a border, and you look across and you see Jordan.
Multiple times throughout the trip.
But there's so many moments like that.
It's not big.
The whole country's about the size of New Jersey.
Yeah, Jersey.
It's not big.
I mean, you can do the whole thing up and down in a week, ten days, give or take.
So it was just great to see mom and dad, though.
Being there with them.
And Tanya and I had come before, and so... Going in the Dead Sea.
He's got a story behind that, but... Yeah, I don't like the Dead Sea.
I'm not a fan.
Not even a fan.
The Dead Sea.
Lots of history.
Lots of culture.
Health.
I understand.
Personally, not a fan.
Not a fan.
Went here last time, five years ago.
Never going back.
Never.
Ever.
Why?
Because I jumped in and everybody said just go ahead and jump in and then boom.
I had that stuff on me like a chrism for a week.
Stinging my eyes, every little scrape and scratch I have.
Not a fan.
Put on the mud.
Enjoy it.
At least they have rinsing stations now.
They didn't have that before, five years ago.
Not a fan.
Never going back.
The Dead Sea, take it or leave it.
But the way I look at it is, God said that he doesn't want any living thing in there, and we ought to abide by it.
I shaved the night before.
Not even a little bit of a fan.
Was on fire.
You shaved the night before you went in?
I didn't know.
Look at our genius over here, folks.
Real smart guy.
It's supposed to be like holy and sacred water and soothing for your skin.
Everybody sells it at the mall.
I was like, yeah, let's do it.
No, the clay, the mud clay is supposed to be good for your skin.
It felt like mace.
But they have I would still recommend it though, just don't get it in your eyes.
That being said.
Don't drink it.
I don't have any room to speak because the last time that I went, the first time when we were here on our honeymoon, I go in up to my knees and say, oh this is great, this is great.
It's very rocky, so the stones are all over.
But, and then Tanya of course is filming, she goes, jump in, jump in, jump in.
Oh, so you started putting it on Tanya.
Hold on, she says it.
No, she does.
And I have it on footage.
So don't even try to say I'm putting it on her, because she said it.
But we go through...
And of course, me being me, I gotta dive in.
So I dove in and just... Rules don't apply to Pozo.
Total force of habit.
Opened my eyes, underwater, in the Dead Sea, and... Long story short, I was blind for about four hours after that.
Tanya had to drive home.
Yeah, that was not a good experience.
And this time around, I think I put my hand in and that was good enough for me.
Yeah.
I was fine.
No, I didn't do the blackface with the mud or any of that.
That did work though.
That did work.
And they have hoses of like regular water.
You could wash it all off.
They didn't have that before.
When I was here five years ago, they've actually built up, so we went to Haleah Beach and we're skipping around a little bit for those of you who know the geography, but Um, they, that wasn't as built up before.
They had already had like the, you know, the restaurants and everything at the top, but the way that it, they had those nice showers and places where you could just wash off.
That was not there five years ago.
So even like right on the dock.
Yeah.
Had that, had that been around before?
Had that been around in the first instance, I probably would have felt a little better about it.
But yeah, I remember I also, I think I cut my foot on a rock and that thing opened up in the Dead Sea and that was an experience.
But, being able to float on it, check the box, did the Dead Sea, amazing.
And remember, of course, as we know, Connected back, the Dead Sea, this is also the location that we are told in the Bible, east of Abraham's tent, is the location of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Correct.
Yes.
So, this was the area where, and there is a huge pillar of salt, it's like rock salt at this point, that you can go past.
I don't think we went there this time, but I was looking it up, and they actually refer to it as Lot's wife.
I didn't see that.
Yeah.
And this is the crazy thing is that archaeological studies, this one that just came out a couple of months ago, actually shows that scientifically they have found that there was a city, there was a tell, pretty much in that exact location, right off the Dead Sea, that about 4,000 years ago,
was destroyed by a meteor that flew in from the sky and then exploded over the city with the force of 100 percent with the force of a thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs so a thousand Hiroshima's that we've actually found evidence that four thousand years ago this event did take place they called it a cosmic air burst that destroyed an entire city
In the exact location that the Bible describes where Sodom and Gomorrah were.
Where is this from?
What reference is that?
This is a new study that just came out a couple of months ago.
Okay.
And there's been a lot of evidence and a lot of theorizing that this city in the past was the city of Sodom connecting the two.
Now the archaeological The survey that was done here wasn't done from any perspective of trying to connect it to Sodom, but they did say that, yes, they're almost certain that the city that they're looking at was destroyed 4,000 years ago by a cosmic airburst, by a meteor.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Righteous?
Yeah.
So, and again, it's exactly where the Bible says it was.
And so, of course, for the non-believers, they would say, well, clearly, the meteor hit the city, and then... Which city?
Sodom.
Okay.
Okay.
And so, they would say, the meteor hit the city, and then the story was written after the fact, you know, as a way of explaining what happened.
But for believers, we would also point, we would point out, though, that this has been a story That we've passed down.
That's a lot like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
and now science is just catching up.
Right.
So why would this one...
That's a lot like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
I mean, we get that later.
Which, well, I mean, we were there, so right before we went into the Dead Sea, because we were, for those following the geography of this, we stopped at the Cave of Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.
There's various stories about how they were discovered, but the idea was back in the 1940s, they went into this cave, and they found that this group of Jewish...
Shepherds.
Well, no, no, no, I'm talking about the Essenes.
So the Essenes had preserved these scrolls at this time and did so in such a way on leather.
And because, again, this is right off the Dead Sea, one of the driest places in the entire world.
So because it was on leather, they were preserved in clay jars, and it's one of the driest and most arid places in the world, plus in a cave, so protected from the elements, that these 2,000-year-old scrolls were found, and to the point where you could even still read them.
It's ancient Hebrew, but you could still read them, and they contain the oldest copies of the Bible that we still have, that have ever been found.
Yeah, just tying in the fact that the theory comes out about the cosmic airburst, but they find the Dead Sea Scrolls, and then bring the oldest translations to the Dead Sea Scrolls, put them together, And the words match exactly.
Right, that's exactly right.
So they brought the translations of the current Bible as we have it, and compared it to Dead Sea Scrolls.
So obviously, if there were some, hey, these are receipts, and so we'd now be able to know this is the closest to the actual source writings that exist.
And it turns out that guess what?
It was the same writing.
So that means that the process of the preservation of the Bible that went on through the centuries, through the ages, the Middle Ages, and in the Middle Ages in Europe, for example, I mean, it really was the only people that were doing reading and writing.
That was the priests.
That was the monks.
That was the monasteries.
They were the ones, the Franciscans, the Benedictines, they were the ones that were keeping all of this going on.
for hundreds of years at that point and really carried that light all the way through those ages.
Yeah.
So you didn't have, you know, printing presses and this is where you get your illuminated manuscripts and your codex.
Illuminated stained glass too.
Stained glass, that's true.
For people who were illiterate.
Right.
And the magnificence of the structure itself.
Gothic architecture and mostly just a stained glass.
I don't want to get into like different styles but The paintings, the large paintings.
Or at the Vatican, the statue, everything.
Everything.
The most gorgeous artwork in the world.
They relied on art rather than literacy.
And so the point though is that They were able to find these scrolls.
The scrolls matched.
So it says, hey, the translations were correct.
It was handed down to us properly.
We can now go back.
We can roll back that clock another 2,000 years.
They were even scared to publish it.
Remember he said that too?
For like four or five years.
Well, that's pretty much any academic study, though.
Sure.
They'll be that way.
But if the Bible had different stories in the beginning, it would change the foundations.
Well, there is one interesting angle to this that One of the scrolls found at Qumran was the Book of Enoch.
Isaiah, they had all the major prophets, but one of the scrolls found at Qumram was the Book of Enoch.
You mentioned that.
Yeah.
And the tour guide said that was a little valagon.
Yeah, he said it was a balagan.
So, one of the issues with this, of course, is that the Book of Enoch is considered apocrypha by every major church, every major Jewish sect that doesn't, you know, doesn't consider it to be valid.
But, but except, I believe the Ethiopians is the only one.
But, The Essenes clearly thought that there was some importance to it and so they kept it safe.
And one of the interesting pieces of the Book of Enoch, and we can find in the New Testament and Old Testament, there are references and words that seem to have been taken from this Book of Enoch, which You know, that makes sense.
I mean, I've got books at home that aren't the Bible, right?
Sure.
You know, so it certainly was something that was floating around at this time, but probably one of the most... one of the passages in it that stands out the most, and one of the writings, is the fact that it talks about the dealings of the creation of demigods.
This idea that fallen angels were Commingling, if you will, with human women and creating a race of hybrid beings that, if you go to Genesis 6, Genesis 6 says that these were the Nephilim.
And the Nephilim, or which the King James... Not the Anunnaki?
Not the Anunnaki, no.
The Nephilim, which the King James Version translates as giants.
Yeah.
that they were the great heroes and the great warriors of old.
And then there's other versions, there's other subdivisions of the Nephilim.
The Rephaim is one of these.
And there's thought that Goliath was one of the descendants of the Nephilim at one point.
And it says that this was in the days before the flood.
So it could be, and there's a lot of scholarship on this, it could be that one of the reasons of the flood was to wipe out the Nephilim.
In the first instance, because they were never intended to be created.
That this was something that was outside of God's creation, that the angels and the fallen angels and humans were creating together.
I guess that would fit into the context of the world was covered with sin.
It's plausible.
Yeah, right, and then so the theory goes a little bit further even that the reason that the fallen angels were doing this was because they knew that the Messiah was to come from humanity and that to come from men and that they knew that the Messiah would have domination over them and so because they didn't want
that to happen because they thought that maybe they could put a wrench in God's design.
Because, of course, you can't... It's interesting.
If you want to overthrow God, they talk about the rebellion of heaven.
So, of course, you couldn't defeat God.
Nothing could defeat... What are you going to do?
Are you going to throw something at him?
You know, you can't, but you could come into creation.
And of course, we know the first instance of being deceptive, the serpent, tempting you with sin.
Of course, these are ways to To defile creation and to tempt humans into sin, but another way that at one point the Bible says, and this is, Genesis 6 is in the Bible, the Nephilim, and this is referring to this idea that a hybrid race was created in order to try to stop the creation of the Messiah.
You keep mentioning the word creation too though, but what did Noah bring on the ark?
Right.
And what didn't he bring?
What didn't he bring?
Yes.
We all know who took out Goliath though, right?
King David.
Who just got back from there.
Who just visited his tomb, that's right.
So this is a connection.
This is a connection to some of the stuff that goes even further back.
I mean, everything here is connected.
That's... After the flood.
That's after the flood.
It was after the flood.
And so the theory goes a little bit further even that says that if you did the book of Joshua, if you take this reading of it, then that means the book of Joshua, they're not just fighting other tribes, they're fighting giants.
And they're clearing the land of Cana of these giants.
And so that some had survived, and maybe not giants in the, you know, sort of cartoon version, but maybe just larger, stronger, more powerful, perhaps having some kind of supernatural or spiritual... Yeah, well, even in our life, not our lifetime, but Andre the Giant wasn't even a hundred years ago.
Well, so there's two... It's gigantism.
There's two translations.
Or it's a scientific mutation.
Even on Goliath, there's two translations of his height.
One of the translations has his height as about six foot nine.
So, big.
Very big.
The other translation has his height as about nine foot nine.
Which would be an actual giant.
Yeah.
Something not human.
And so, it's an interesting take, and I don't know that I endorse it, but that's the explanation of it.
But getting back to it, so, away from the Dead Sea Scrolls as we're going through the land... By the way, we did go to Mount Bental, so I did look for King Og while I was up there in King Og's Bed.
Another one of the potential giants.
The land of Bashan.
That...
So we climbed Masada.
We did.
We climbed Masada.
We definitely did.
Actually, that was one of my first reflections of seeing the history of Masada and reading Maccabees along the way, is that these people fled from Romans, but they still fought with such ferocity, with nothing.
They didn't have cell phones, they didn't have technology.
They barely had water, they had food, they had family, and they had traditions.
And that's all what Maccabees is about.
Defying the king.
Let's explain what Masada is for people who don't know what it is.
So Masada is this huge castle fortress, it's actually a resort of King Herod the Great, that was built on the banks of the Dead Sea.
It was built just after, or well, I should say it was built just before the time of Christ.
So it's about 2,000 years old.
It's concurrent with Christ.
But this revolt that Kevin is talking about took place just after, about 70 AD, one of the Jewish revolts.
And this is, of course, when the temple was destroyed by the Romans.
First temple was destroyed by the Babylonians.
But during this time, King Herod had built a giant palace on top of a mountain all the way out in the desert, all the way overlooking the Dead Sea.
And it's still there today.
The ruins are still there.
You can go.
You can visit.
There's a path on the way up.
That you can climb.
It's called the Snake Path.
We did it.
We walked it.
We did the Snake Path.
Pilgrimage.
There's another path that's even longer.
It takes like three hours to get up.
And then there's the Roman ramp, which is around the backside.
So when the Romans attacked, they built this ramp.
You can still see it today.
And there's a cable car, of course, for the kids.
But what did it, and so when the zealots who were there, essentially staying away from the Romans, they were able to hold out for three years, three years under siege from they were able to hold out for three years, three years under siege from the Romans in this palace, on the top of a mountain, in the middle of the desert, middle of the desert,
desert, middle of the desert, with nothing other than the supplies that they had brought with them.
So they had a cistern up there, but no running water, keep in mind, just on the top of Masada.
Yeah, it just brought this up too.
This is from the Tomb of King David, just to emphasize how they fought.
But it says, and I should merit to be bold like a leopard, light as an eagle, run like a deer, and strong as a lion, to do the desire of our Father in heaven.
I don't know if that's... Is that from Maccabees?
It's from this prayer.
They give it to everybody that enters, but comparatively to the United States of America, and like, if we had an enemy force, like, attack us.
We kind of mentioned it in the last podcast, but, like, where's our unity?
And you'd almost think that some of the people in the U.S.
today might welcome a change of government.
Right, right.
Which of course is as you go through the Holy Land you you find out that one of the the pieces of history here and then and obviously gets into the current situation is that This land has gone through so many changes in terms of who's in charge of it, whether it be the Israelites, whether it be the Babylonians, whether it be the Neo-Babylonians, whether it be Rome, whether it be Byzantium, whether it be the Ottoman Turks, the British.
And now it is a sovereign state again.
And so it's really a story of just constant cycles of change.
It's an example of Having faith and your traditions till the end, like how the battle ended.
Even when the Romans came, they did not surrender.
No, they did not.
And so at the end, rather than surrender, rather than being taken into captivity, they decided to take their own lives in Masada.
And it was, I think there were some women and children were the only ones at the very end who were left when the Romans came up.
So we climbed it, and we made sure that we weren't taking no cable car.
That's for sure.
And that being said, we took the Snake Path.
Honestly, Snake Path wasn't that bad.
Do you think it was that bad?
No, it was easy.
It was about a mile, but maybe half a mile up, and it took us 35 minutes, I believe.
35 minutes, yep.
It was fine.
The humidity was hot.
I wouldn't take the kids.
They say do it in the morning.
We did around 8 a.m.
I don't know that I would have taken the kids, even Jack-Jack at age four.
Though I did take him through Hezekiah.
We did take both the kids through Hezekiah's tunnels.
Yes, we did.
That's here in Jerusalem.
Just an amazing experience.
This ancient aqueduct under the old city of Jerusalem.
Actually doing a pilgrimage, too.
It's like walking and that's kind of lost in the modern day, but like working and sacrificing as like a way of penance and like a prayer to God, even without your words, without all like your beautiful phrases or Instagram posts or whatever, just like just walking, you know, as like an offer to God.
Like up the mountain and doing things like that.
Hezekiah's Tunnel, by the way, the water comes up to your waist just about.
Without accolades, right?
Right, without accolades.
So, I felt like it was pure.
And the kids loved it up there.
They loved the castle.
They loved the ruins.
They were having a great time.
They loved Ein Gedi a little better.
They did.
And so after that, we went to the beautiful and very special oasis of Ein Gedi.
If you have time, if you're visiting the Dead Sea, do not skip Ein Gedi.
This was, so this was by the way, the oasis where King David hid out after King Saul was going after him.
And it's this gorgeous oasis right off the, essentially the side of the Dead Sea, about halfway down from the northern part of it.
And you walk in and you climb through.
It's, it's some of the most Pure, fresh water that you'll ever see, and it's coming through the desert, it's filtered all the way through, through the sandstone, and it's fresh.
So it's not like the saltwater of the Dead Sea.
It's all fresh.
I think it's the closest large freshwater source to anywhere near the Dead Sea.
And so there's trees there, there's plants, and you walk up and there's a series of about a dozen waterfalls as you go all the way up.
And then the final waterfall you arrive at is King David's Waterfall.
And so we went through... It was fit for a king.
It was fit for a king, yeah.
Quite majestic.
So we went through and we saw, we took the kids in and oh yeah, we went in the water, we did all of it.
Yeah.
And drank the water.
And... And it's like bushes I had like growing over the stream and they like cut through so it was like a tunnel.
It created basically like a natural cave almost.
Yeah.
Like a natural cave and a tunnel that at some point you had the water, I was glad I had my waterproof boots, that You walked through the natural tunnel and then at one point, of course, there was two routes and it said one was the wet route, one was the dry route.
Yes.
And we took Jack, I took Jack-Jack on the wet route all the way up the waterfalls and then to the point where you actually had to use handholds just to climb up the face of this waterfall and I had him holding on to me like a spider monkey.
Really?
Yeah.
I didn't go that path.
Yeah, you didn't go that path.
I didn't, that's right, I didn't.
That's alright, you know.
Some of us go a little extra, but it's okay.
It's okay.
Well, we're both pretty extra.
Yeah, I really enjoyed that.
And to speak to just, like, nature and the Desert Fathers and having nothing, like, you still cannot escape the spirit.
It was a quiet place.
It was a very spiritual place.
It was quiet and you could just get in touch, get grounded.
You could easily pray.
No cell phone service, any of that stuff.
So we finished up there, so King David's Oasis, hit the Dead Sea, and then drove up through the night all the way north to the Sea of Galilee.
That we did.
We get up to the Sea of Galilee and of course, well I guess we stopped in Nazareth first, didn't we?
Yeah.
I was getting it confused with Bethlehem.
In Nazareth, they have a great sort of recreation.
We had a cool recreated experience of what it would be like to walk around the village in the biblical times, to eat a meal that would be similar to Christ's meal.
But then we went to really I think the first Holy site in Christianity that we visited on this trip.
And it is, when you pray the rosary, it's actually the very first one.
The very first mystery.
First joyful mystery.
First joyful mystery of the rosary.
Saint Gabriel.
The annunciation of Archangel Gabriel to Mary the handmaiden.
At a little stream, a little well.
And they have Mary's grotto.
And where she said yes.
So how did that feel, actually knowing that you were standing on the very hill where that took place?
Where the word was made flesh.
So, in Latin, it has the entire, the entire piece there.
It was moving.
I was beside myself.
I couldn't help it.
I kneeled down and started, just started up the rosary and yeah, it just got really welled up and I just stayed there.
It's like sometimes, I don't know from my personal experience, but time stops and you kind of feel like a weightlessness to you.
I actually felt it earlier today too at the Western Mall, which is interesting.
But yeah, it was amazing.
And then to have you guys come and join me too, that was like a very A very special moment for our family.
We prayed the rosary right there.
Beautiful basilica, by the way.
Completely international.
Almost every country in the world had a mosaic or a fresco.
That's true, of Mary.
Of the Blessed Mother that's shown there.
It's just incredible to see a complete outpouring of Actual globalism.
That's the other kind of globalism.
That's universalism.
That's the difference.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Guilty to the king of the universe and his mother.
So after that, that was when we went to Galilee afterwards.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And visited, did some political stuff as well, went to, you know, political historical stuff, met with some IDF soldiers.
If anyone do something serious, we are the one who will take him down.
We just, we don't just go to the fence with a tank.
I see.
We had our grandfather, he was, he worked on American tanks in World War II.
He was a mechanic and part of a scout, so he would go out And help clear the land, make sure the maps were correct.
First Armored Division in North Africa during World War II, yeah.
So I appreciate what you do.
Got to see one of their newer tanks, Malkia tank.
Got to go to the Golan Heights, which was obviously a highly disputed area, something I'm very familiar with.
Got to an outpost.
So the Golan Heights, for those who don't know, Syria considers it occupied land, Israel considers it their land, having been won in the Six-Day War in 1967, that it's right on the borders between Israel, Lebanon, and Syria.
So you look over one side, you see Lebanon, you look over the other side, you see Syria.
It's right there.
Syria, of course, considers it to be occupied by Israel.
And Megiddo.
We stopped by it too.
We also stopped by Megiddo, that's right.
So Megiddo, of course, the site of Armageddon.
So Megiddo is the place of, in Revelation, what we are told will be the area where the armies of demons meet with the armies of the Lord.
We're told that in the final days, that's where it will come.
Intense.
Great book to read about just the archaeological background on Megiddo because people have been living on that hill for something like 10,000 years and it goes all the way back to the Stone Age.
So there's a great book on it called The Source by James Michener.
Which I read, my mom read as well, mom read that actually, on the way here.
And it goes back, and it's a great narrative, but it also kind of, so it's this, it's a book with an overarching narrative.
Same author who did Poland and Alaska and Texas, South Pacific, bunch of different books.
You gave me one.
Yeah, I gave you this Poland one.
That his So the story starts with three archaeologists who are working on the dig, but then it goes through and it tells you the story of one family all the way back in the Stone Age, then it cuts back to the archaeologists, then you pick up the family again in the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, Biblical times, and it just kind of goes all the way through following this one family all the way through into the 1970s, basically.
Right.
And so it's really interesting to read Highly recommend.
And it's fun.
It's a good read.
It's long.
You know, that's probably the only issue.
Audiobooks, if you do audiobooks like I do, is a good way to find it.
But that was Thelma Guido.
It was essentially what he's talking about in the book.
I call it ThelmaCore.
And to add, this whole time I've been trying to figure what I can take away from this trip and what I can do as a contributor to bring my experience back to the United States.
And one of the things I observed was they take care of their river border, their border crossing.
Well, all their borders.
And they have a really nice wall on the other side.
Yeah, I mean, here's the thing, right?
When you're talking about borders and border security, go look at the way Israel takes care of their borders, both externally and internally, because of course there's a massive wall that we drove past between the Israeli-controlled territory and the West Bank, so the Palestinian territories.
And we're not talking about this thing with the slats and the little stuff.
Concrete, barbed wire, watchtowers, spotlights, the whole nine yards.
This country, they're not messing around when it comes to that stuff.
Iron dome is another part of that of course for anti-air defense, or air defense I should say.
Same deal with their northern borders their southern borders.
It's militarized.
There's military outposts on all of these things No jokes when it comes to that stuff And so when you're a country that wants to defend its sovereignty or a country that's wants to defend its nationalism It's kind of interesting how Totally fine when it's a country like Israel, or Ukraine, but when we come back to the United States and say, I want to be able to defend my country that way, suddenly you get labeled every name under the sun, you get all sorts of crazy things said about you, and
You're wondering, wait, I'm confused because you said those things were good in those places, but now I come back home and say I want that and I want to defend my border and I'm not allowed to.
Yeah, that's what I wanted to highlight.
And so, Sea of Galilee, incredibly moving experience, just to cut back to that.
Town of Capernaum, Peter's home.
Yeah.
They have a church built over directly what they believe was Christ's room in that church, and they have the beach that's right there.
The synagogue he went to.
The synagogue he went to where he taught.
And they have the beach right where Jesus met St.
Peter and St.
Andrew.
In fact, we can still see Simon, of course, when they were mending their nets.
Yeah.
And he said to come and follow him.
To be fishers of men.
I know, and Dad was just like, where's the poles?
I want to go fishing.
Dad wanted to go fishing.
We're like, no, no, no.
Of course.
Not yet.
This is a different bank.
To be fishers of men, not fishing with the men.
I definitely felt something walking on that beach.
And of course, the water's still there.
The sea's still there.
Archaeologically speaking, some of the stuff is disputed.
I get that.
You know you're on the Sea of Galilee when you're there.
You know that's the spot.
You know that's where it is.
Yeah.
I'm so grateful to just have a bit of the experience.
Everybody has shared having moments at these sites.
So the one thing to understand is that about 70% of the Gospels actually takes place right there on the banks of the Sea of Galilee.
So going around the various towns, going around the various Settlements, of course, walking on the water, quelling the storm, calming the storm.
That's all right there at Sea of Galilee.
That got to me because that's one of my favorite pictures of Jesus is from Peter's perspective where he's underwater.
Of course!
And Jesus is reaching down.
Yes.
I don't know who the artist is, but...
I would, that would always be in my house.
That's all of us.
That's all of us at that point.
There's still time for you.
Oh, right, that's the caption.
There's still time.
Well, that's what I wrote.
Right.
I like that caption.
All sacred ground.
So for those times when you feel like you're completely underwater, you're done for, Christ is right there.
Yeah.
Speaking of which, how about those group baptisms?
We got to go visit the actual site.
So, coming down a little bit further, we hopped in the cars, we drove about two hours straight through the desert, maybe about an hour, hour 45, from the Sea of Galilee down alongside the riverbank of The Jordan River, which is the border between Jordan and Israel, even today, and we went to the actual site of Christ's baptism.
And when you go there, it's still an international border, and it's not a border crossing, so you're not supposed to, obviously, cross the river, but it's not a wide river.
It's probably, if you've ever been to the Rio Grande, it's about the same as that, except here it's palm trees and reeds and going through the desert.
But you see the Israeli flag on one side and the Jordanian flag on the other.
Soldiers here, soldiers here, armed.
But then you see pilgrims, Christian pilgrims, on both sides going in.
And of course we went into the water there, brought the family in, brought the kids in, said a prayer, said a blessing.
And beautiful Crusader churches right on the banks as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, just every stop is just like something else.
Like we even had like doves.
Didn't you see?
Yeah, I was about to say.
Wasn't there some birds that you saw?
I was just sitting there waiting for you guys and then all of a sudden there's like these doves, white doves, landed on the column next to me and... White doves.
Lo and behold, you know, what a coincidence, right?
Just like in the gospel.
And you have really got a sense driving through the desert there.
with whom I am well pleased. - Really got a sense driving through the desert there that just another example, by the way, of connecting a book that you've read, a story that you've known from childhood, both childhood, both a story that you've known from childhood, both childhood, both our cases, obviously, of John the Baptist.
So this is where John the Baptist was preaching and conducting his ministry.
They said that he lived out in the desert eating nothing but locusts and honey and wearing sackcloth.
And when we were driving through some of those desert hills and mountains, It was not hard for me to picture a guy living out in the middle of the wilderness because that's exactly what it looks like today.
It's the last gospel at the end of every Latin mass, you know, they say.
I'm gonna not butcher it, but it's like I am not the light, but I came before the light to like show who will come after me.
His cousin.
Right.
At the end of every Latin mass, they say.
And so Following that site of Christ's baptism, we made it all the way into the holy city of Jerusalem itself.
And so the very first morning... Here we are, downtown.
That's where we still are.
And so the very first morning of that, I woke up early, grabbed the kids and grabbed mom.
And we walked all the way down from where we're staying into the old city.
And it was open already.
It's about maybe 7.45 a.m.
You know, no tourists were around.
And we got to have some quiet alone time in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
And so the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, for folks who don't know, is the spot, the church that was built.
It's a massive church complex which is venerated and recognized by both the Catholic Church The Orthodox Church, as well as the Coptic Church, and as the site of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ.
This was the church that Saint Helena, who was the mother of Emperor Constantine, founded all the way back in the 300s AD.
in the 300s AD, then in 1006 AD, the Muslim caliphate came and attacked the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
So they built this giant church over the site, over where the cross stood, the Rock of Golgotha, and then you can walk up, even today, and there's an altar on top of the Rock of Golgotha that you can put your hand under, touch the rock, touch where the cross stood, then come down on the other side, you walk across, you see the slab in the middle, and then the actual tomb of Christ is still there.
And the word sepulchre means tomb.
And this was the church that in 1006 AD that the Caliphate attacked, sacked the church itself and led into motion the events that would later be called the Crusades when all the Christian soldiers, the knights and the kings came from Europe from all across Christendom to return to Jerusalem and retake the Holy Land.
Amen.
Amen.
And as well, we did the Via Dolorosa on the way and the Stations of the Cross.
That's right.
So later on, you and I went and we did the entire Via Dolorosa.
So the Via Dolorosa is the way of suffering, dolorous.
And on that, it is the 14 Stations of the Cross.
1 through 10 are outside on the street.
And then the last 4, 11 to 14, are all within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself.
And so, the last four stations, of course, where Jesus is nailed, where Jesus is crucified, Jesus is laid, and then where Jesus is entombed.
And we did... I don't think I've done an actual Stations of the Cross and said it all the way through since confirmation.
Family that prays together, stays together.
Family that prays together, stays together.
Amen.
Patrick Payton.
Amen.
But yeah, I mean, that was... And the full Stations of the Cross like that.
That was the whole shebang.
Mom was bawling, Dad was crying.
When Dad got in and saw the slab, he just started... I couldn't even look at Dad.
I was going to lose it.
Our Dad is...
He comes from that generation that you don't let your feelings out.
You don't let your feelings show.
You never show weakness.
You never show hurt.
You just keep it all.
You keep it in.
He just had hip surgery.
To see him get down on the stone.
No cushion.
He knelt down in front of the slab of Christ, the 13th station, and was just bawling.
And I could tell that it had come over him at that point, that he knew where he was.
He knew exactly where he was, and the power of that church, because of what Christ did there for us, and each of us as individuals, just hit him directly.
And the fact that we were able to be there, and I of course had done it before with Tanya, What he continues to do.
That's right.
He exists beyond space and time.
To be there with mom and dad, with you, with the kids.
That was very special.
The Bible is not just a book.
And if you think it is, then you're missing half the story.
In fact, you're missing the large part of the story.
And I would say this as a message to Even folks out there who are agnostic, or even atheists and non-believer types, that, look, you know, not everybody's going to be like Kevin and I, kneeling and praying in Latin inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Although you should be!
But...
Just understand that you can't really understand Western civilization, Western society, our history, our institutions, our way of life, unless you understand all of this.
Because this has been a massive part of the creation of Western society and Western culture, whether you want to believe in the supernatural metaphysical aspects of it or not, that You have to at least acknowledge that this is a major, major part of what got us to where we are now, what is directing us still as we're going.
There are traditions that are being passed on, certainly, from father to son.
And in this case, I was able to take my two children.
To all of those sites along with us.
Some cases literally carrying them on my back if I had to.
Actually many cases carrying them on our backs.
But the point being that that's something... For the sake of the pilgrimage.
That's something that hopefully that one day they'll be able to do with their children when I'm older and my knees are getting bad and I'm complaining in a backseat.
That they're taking their kids as well.
Pray without ceasing.
Yeah, so this is my second time to Israel.
Just come.
Just come.
Just hop on the plane and come.
Just come do it.
Visit the Holy Land.
You will not regret it and you will always be able to say that every time that you turn a page in the Bible, you'll realize, wait a minute, I remember exactly what that was like because I was there.
Amen?
Amen.
Hey, what are you doing?
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Amen.
Ladies and gentlemen, as always, you have my permission.
