Today we visit several important sites. We will first travel to Caesarea Philippi, the place where Peter first confessed that Jesus was more than a prophet, but the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. From here we visit Tel Dan, and ancient site that dates back to around the time of the divided kingdom of Israel. It is here that Jeroboam constructed a place to worship golden calf at Dan. We will see the remains of a four-horned altar. Our next stop is Bethsaida, the birth place of the disciples Peter and Andrew and location of many of Jesus' miracles. We then head south to Masada. Dinner and overnight Masada Youth Hostel.

After Masada we travel a few miles up the road to Qumran. In Jesus' day, Qumran was a monastic-like community of radically conservative Jews known as Essenes. Convinced that the Jewish nation had completely gone astray from the worship of God, the Essences founded their own community in the Judean desert where they could more closely keep the Mosaic law and maintain remain ritually pure. They also believed that the end of time was at hand and that it would involve a battle between the "sons of light" and the "sons of darkness." The Essenes also appear to be the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered in 1947. While the Dead Sea Scrolls contain various documents about the beliefs of the Essences, they more importantly contain our oldest copies of the Hebrew Scriptures--dating back to around the year 300 B.C., over a thousand years earlier than all other copies of the Hebrew Scriptures. The caves where these scrolls were discovered can be seen in the distance when we visit Qumran. 

Today we walk in the steps of Jesus as we spend the day exploring the sites and sounds of the old city. Our first stop will be the Temple Mount Sifting Project. Here we will get the opportunity to play archaeologist as we looking for ancient treasure as we sift through dirt that was illegally removed from the Temple Mount by Muslims several years ago. Israel is allowing volunteers to sift through this dirt. We will find all kinds of stuff. The second stop our walking tour takes us the city ancient city of David. In addition to seeing remains of the palace build by David and his descendants, we will also walk through Hezekiah's tunnel, a 1,500-foot-long-tunnel created by King Hezekiah in 701 BC to protect Jerusalem’s water source, the Gihon Spring, from the invading Assyrians (2 Chron. 32:2-4). After lunch we will visit the Herodium, Herod the Great's desert fortress, located just outside of Jerusalem.