I visited Israel for the first time in 2015 with International
Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (ICEJ) to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles,
along with their conference and tour. At that time, I did not know much about
Israel. When we visited each site, I had no idea about the background about any
of these sites. However, there was a strong sense of the presence of God in
many of the sites and occurrence of some very unusual signs (eg. Me seeing the
sudden appearance of a golden cross on the Israeli flag as I video recorded our
Jesus boat set sail). I felt a strong burden for Israel, but had no idea what
role I can play for Israel other than to intercede for this nation.
More on the 2015 trip:
This year, I felt a call to visit Israel during its 70th
anniversary and decided to come with Chosen People Ministry (CPM). It is a
mission organisation serving the Jews. It was founded in 1894 by Rabbi Leopold
Cohn, a Jew who became orphaned at the age of 7 and recognised Jesus as Messiah
when he moved to New York City as an adult.
The tour program seemed great, and in the evening conference had many
“heavy weight” speakers (seminary principals, professors, archaeologists, etc).
My mom never visited Israel and I thought it might be good for her to
experience Israel. Furthermore, coming with a mission organisation might give
me more ideas about what else I can do for Israel in addition to intercession.
When I decided to join this tour, it was already past the application deadline.
I tried my luck with the Hong Kong branch and they allowed me to join their
group. The Hong Kong group was great because they added two extra days of tour
to their program. The tour worked out cheaper if I buy a ticket from Sydney to
Hong Kong myself and join up with the group in Hong Kong than to buy my own
ticket to Israel. Therefore, I made a stopover in Hong Kong before the trip,
and in Taiwan after the trip. The timing of this tour seemed “tailor made” for
me, coinciding with my semester break from Morling College, and the stopover in
HK allowed me to catch up with my high school friend, and the stopover in Taiwan
right after the trip enabled me to join the annual Taiwan Association of Family
Medicine conference, thus earning some CPD points.
In marked contrast to my last trip to Israel in 2015 during the Feast
of Tabernacles, the celebratory climax of the year for the Jews, this visit coincided
with their lowest point since it was during the Three Weeks, an annual period
of mourning over the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem.
This time I promised to myself that I will be bringing back a Shofar!
Israel Day 1, 4July:
Our bus captain, missionary Gordon Law, is very friendly and experienced
in taking tour/mission groups.
I was very happy on arrival and felt a tingle on my cheeks. Our first
stop was Mount Carmel, land of the Tribe of Dan, where Elijah defeated the
prophets of Baal. Coincidentally our tour guide’s name is also Elijah: Israeli
Archaeologist Eli Shukron, who made several important archaeological findings:
It’s interesting to note that water is drying in all the nations around
Israel, eg. Iraq, Egypt, Syria etc. Israel has water, because they are able to
use high technology methods to get water from the Mediterranean Sea, whereas
other places rely on rainwater. The Old Testament calls this sea “The Great
Sea”.
Our second stop was Caesarea. The beach was beautiful, but my mom and I
didn’t have sunscreen in our backpacks, so my shoulders and nose got sunburnt
very fast. We saw the Crusader City, the Herodian Port and Aqueduct, Herod’s
Palace, and the Roman Amphitheatre.
The bus captain and tour guide are both very knowledgeable and take great
care to explain things clearly. I had a feeling that this trip is a great complements
to the 2015 in that it would greatly enrich my knowledge about Israel and get
me to several places which I didn’t get to go to last time such as Masada, a
UNESCO World Heritage Site and the site of the last Jewish resistance before
the Romans expelled all the Jews out of the Holy Land approximately 2000 years
ago.
We lived in the Dan Hotel and got Room 119. 119 is the emergency number
in Taiwan (equivalent to the function of 000 in Australia). As the day passed,
I encountered interference in the spiritual realm so it was harder to enter
into a state of “extreme personal closeness” with God compared to the trip in
2015.
For a conference with 600+ delegates coming from all sorts of places
globally, the organisers did a great job at organising this whole event and
things went along quite smoothly. In fact, they initially planned a 150 people
conference but the event became too popular! Food in the hotel was great.
However, the wifi didn’t work most of the time, and my mobile phone had an
existing touch screen defect which became worse in the hot weather. So I was
quite cut off from technology and social media for most of this trip. In the
evening I realised I developed a painful left foot cellulitis infection and was
lucky I brought Keflex with me, which got on top of the infection immediately!
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