We notice the bullet-pocked walls above the Zion Gate as we enter the confines of the Old City. They are a grim reminder that Yerushalayim, the City of Peace, has hardly lived up to its name. These bullet scars were left in 1948, but war is nothing new to this little piece of real estate. About the only times there seem to be any lasting peace associated with it are the days of the king-priest, Melchizedek; the mighty sovereign, Solomon; and the day yet future when these two will find answer in their Antitype, the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords who shall rule the world from here. For centuries these lines were reality:
Oh! weep for those that wept by Babel’s stream,
Whose shrines are desolate, whose land a dream;
Weep for the harp of Judah’s broken shell;
Mourn–where their God had dwelt, the godless dwell.
Tribes of the wandering feet and weary breast,
How shall ye flee away and be at rest?
The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cave;
Mankind their country, Israel but the grave!
When Lord Byron wrote this dirge, the words were all true, sadly true. But not so today. No longer are Jews forbidden to enter on penalty of death or pay their Gentile rulers for the privilege of weeping at the Wall. Jerusalem is again in the hands of the Jews. For how long? It is hard to see how they would ever give it up until their last drop of blood is spilled in its defense.
Yet we do see–though Israeli soldiers are present–that the great paving stones which once upheld the glorious second temple now displays the shrine of the false prophet, Mohammed. Instead of the silver trumpets calling Israel to the house of their God, the muzzein wails for the Muslim faithful to turn their backs on Jerusalem and pray towards Mecca. It is a deeply moving sight to see 10,000 followers of Islam on their faces in prayer on the Temple Mount on the last great day of Ramadan. Our Saviour is the light for these Gentiles, too.
The Jewish quarter has been almost completely rebuilt since it was ravaged between 1948 and 1967. But in the rebuilding process, first the layers of previous civilizations were uncovered. So to the careful visitor almost every turn unfolds another time. You can walk along the Cardo, the heart, the main street through Hadrian’s Roman city built over the ruins of the one destroyed by Titus, fulfilling the prophecy of the Lord Jesus that the temple would not have one stone left on another. Near the Wall, recent excavations have found the New Testament street that the Lord and His disciples would have traversed.
You can walk through what is thought to be the high priest’s house; look down into the pool of Bethesda with its porticos; linger at the Pavement, the open courtyard of the Antonia fortress where our Lord was put to shame. But you can go back much further than that. See Hezekiah’s Broad wall defending the vulnerable northern approach and rebuilt by Nehemiah; look down the old Jebusite water shaft through which Joab climbed to deliver the city to David 3,000 years ago; or think long and hard at the heights of Moriah where Abraham offered Isaac and, said the Lord, he “rejoiced to see My day and was glad.”
You can look down into the Hinnom valley where Manasseh erected an idol to Moloch or up to Ornan’s threshing-floor where Solomon built a temple to Jehovah; imagine Isaiah and Hezekiah spreading their need before God or Athaliah defying Him with her slaughter of the seed royal. There is no end of possibilities.
But they are all gone now. In their place the city streets are filled with multitudes who have never heard that from this very city went forth the Saviour of the world to die for them. Once more we need to heed the Master’s plea: “Beginning at Jerusalem…”