The Mount of Olives

Today I went on a tour of the Mount of Olives, a mountain to the east of Jerusalem and next door to Mt. Scopus. The Mount of Olives is almost entirely covered by a huge cemetery, mostly Jewish. It is the oldest cemetery in the world that is still active. People want to be buried there because the Scriptures say that the Messiah will return to Earth on the Mount of Olives, and that those buried there will rise from the dead first. Even in death, location means everything. The Muslims also believe that the Messiah will return to Earth on the Mount of Olives, and will create a bridge from the Mount of Olives to the Temple Mount for mankind to walk on before being judged under the arches in front of the Dome of the Rock. I asked the guide that since the Muslims believed that judgement day would occur on the Temple Mount, why isn't it considered the holiest site in Islam, instead of being the third behind Mecca and Medina? He had no answer for me. The Mount of Olives' name in Arabic means "the border" because it stands at the literal border between the city of Jerusalem and the West Bank. It is speculated that it might make up an actual border if the State of Palestine is ever officially created. We started our tour at the top of the Mount at an ancient church called "the Church of the Ascension", the place where Jesus left this earth and rose into Heaven. The church is one of the oldest in Christendom, but now it is a mosque. The Muslims guard it and destroyed most of the Crusader architecture when they retook Jerusalem in 1187. They allow Christians to hold worship services there one day a year. Despite these insults, the Muslims did preserve the last footprint of Jesus, which the church is built around. After this, we went down a tiny winding road to the "Pater Noster Church", a church founded by a French princess who had become a nun, over the place where Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Pater Noster means "Our Father" in Latin, and this church is dedicated to the Lord's Prayer. Covering all available space, you see the Lord's Prayer written in different languages, the languages of every race, creed, tribe, ethnic group, and people that have come to believe in the Word of God and accept Christ as Lord. The prayer is written on beautiful enamel mosaics. There are some languages represented that are no longer spoken, representing peoples that no longer exist or that were folded into a different group. After this, we continued our descent on a paved road the Jordanians built when they took over East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1948. The construction destroyed some Jewish graves during the process, and the Jordanians even ripped up some tomb stones to use as building material. The next place we stopped at was a small church in a garden overlooking the entirety of the Old City. This church was built to commemorate the spot where Jesus wept for Jerusalem. He wept for the city because He saw its coming destruction by the Romans 40 years later. The church is built in the shape of a tear drop in honor of this. After this, we continued our descent to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus was betrayed. In this garden, olive trees that are over 2,000 years old still stand and live. These trees are owned by the Pope, and come September when the olives are ripe, they will be picked and sent to Rome as olive oil to grace the Holy Father's table. Next to this garden stands the Church of the Nations, paid for by sixteen different nations and built in 1927 to commemorate the betrayal in the garden. We finished out tour by going to see the tomb of Mary, buried deep under the ground and requiring a harrowing descent on steep Crusader steps to get to the tomb itself. Incense was used liberally in all of these churches, a smell I'm fast getting used to in this city. It was amazing to stand on the Mount where Jesus stood, and look out onto the city where He looked at it.