Dr. Ray Pritchard Christian Blog and Commentary

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Israel Trip--Day 1

  • Dr. Ray Pritchard
    Dr. Ray Pritchard is the president of Keep Believing Ministries, an Internet-based ministry serving Christians in 225 countries. He is the author of 29 books, including Stealth Attack, Fire and Rain,… More
  • Published Jan 18, 2007

Dan Panorama Hotel, Tel Aviv, Israel

At this moment we have been up for thirty hours straight. That's approximately how long it took to get from Tupelo, Mississippi to Tel Aviv, Israel. We made the trip with only two glitches. When we boarded the Turkish Airline flight in Chicago, Rose Sullivan lost her passport. After a frantic search turned up nothing, I happened to pat my pants pockets and felt something. It turned out to be Rose’s passport. Disaster averted, although I have no idea how her passport got in my pocket. When we arrived in Tel Aviv, we lost Paul Boesche. Just plain lost him. He left to go to the bathroom but never came back. That would have concerned me more except that Paul has been to Israel at least six times and knows his way around. After waiting thirty minutes, and contemplating how to handle a vanished tour member, it turned out that he made a wrong turn, missed the group, and ended up outside at our bus.

Even though I got lots of funny looks when I said we were flying Turkish Airlines, that turned out to be a very good choice. Excellent food, amazing on-demand video with a little screen for each seat. To pass the time, I watched an episode of the Simpsons, an episode of Everyone Love Raymond, and the classic movie Casablanca. Meanwhile Marlene has been devouring a novel called My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult and Nick read Night by Elie Wiesel. During the ten-hour flight from Chicago to Istanbul, I made rounds several times to chat with the tour members who were scattered throughout the plane. Even though our group comes from MS, IL, OH, FL, AL and NY, people seemed to bond very quickly. I saw Nick having a long chat with Georg Rupprecht in the Istanbul transit lounge. Tonight Nick and Mark ate dinner with Jim and Colleen King. I sat down the Eryn, Dana and Joy Keuer and we had an exciting Bible Q&A about the biblical background of the place we’re going to visit and the meaning of Armageddon (we’re visiting Megiddo tomorrow) in the Bible.

Tonight we enjoyed our first Israeli dinner buffet that included a salad bar with items you’ll never see at Bonanza or the Golden Corral. One of the highlights was onions baked with fresh fruit, which Marlene said was very good.

Our guide Abed has been guiding groups like ours for forty years. He told us that this is not a vacation or a tour. It’s a pilgrimage to seek the roots of our faith. We stopped at Joppa where Jonah fled from the Lord, intending to land in Tarshish but instead he was swallowed by a great fish. This is also where the Apostle Peter stayed in the home of Simon the Tanner (Acts 10) and where he saw the vision of the clean and unclean animals in the sheet being lowered from heaven. By that vision, God signified that the ceremonial acts of the law were gone forever. That led to the church agreeing to admit Gentiles without requiring them to be circumcised. And since we are all Gentiles, you might say that we are here because Peter was there, in Simon's house in Joppa 2000 years ago. Tomorrow it's on to Caesarea, Nazareth and Tiberius.

You can reach the author at ray@keepbelieving.com. Click here to sign up for the free weekly email sermon.