FLORIDA
September 1st
I headed for Florida and was received by Gerry and Melinda. I spoke at their
church; First Baptist church Dover and we were able to get more children
sponsors. Praise God.
HOLY LAND
EXPERIENCE
On Thursday
6th September Gerry and Melinda took me to the Holy Land Experience
in Orlando Florida. This is the place that has built up places and replicas
like those that are in the Holy land in Jerusalem during the days of Jesus.
Currently it is run by the TBN.
The truth is
that this was the most fascinating place I have ever seen in my life that
brings a live the picture of the Bible days. I mean it made the Bible come alive.
Among the many well-built and well maintained are; the garden of Eden,
Bethlehem, garden of Gethsemane, Jerusalem, Calvary hill and Nazareth.
THE BIBLE
The first
place we visited was the place that explains the origin of the the Bible and
it’s authenticity as the work of God.
The Bible is
the most read book, the narrator said as he started his 55 minute tour through
different apartments that explained how the Bible came into existence up to
today.
He told us
how writing started in Mesopotamia and how they started writings on pieces of
stone called Cuneiform. Scripture would
be written on these rocks.
Later on
they started making scrolls from reeds and they would write scripture
manuscripts and later on started using paper. He told us that as the truth of
the word of God started to spread the enemy started to fight and many scrolls
were burnt. Somehow a few were preserved and could be passed on.
The original
scripts were written in Hebrew and later on the New Testament in Greek. John
Wycliff the first man to translate the Bible put it in the language the
ordinary man can read so that the work can spread in the Roman Empire. He translated the N.T into Italian since that
was the language spoken in Rome. Martin Luther influenced the church to read
the Bible and the Bible was translated in German.
William
Tyndale under a price translated the Bible into the ordinary man’s language
ever. And so the Bible could be now read in English. However he was killed for
doing this. Before he died he prayed that God would touch the heart of the king
of England and indeed a few years after his death King William authorized the
Bible to read by all. The King James Version became the first authorized
translation version to be authorized by the King.
Today the
Bible is the most read book in the entire Universe.
THE TOUR
THROUGH THE HOLY LAND EXPERIENCE
We started
the tour with the Garden of Eden with the Ark of the Covenant 
and all the
animals. Then the Tabernacle of Moses. There was this Old Testament priest that
took us step by step through the temple worship of those days. Right from the
alter of sacrifice where Jews would start their worship by sacrificing a lamb.
Then the basin where they would wash their hands lest they die. God is a holy God
so they had to be pure before they enter the Holy place. Then you would enter
the Tabernacle and the first thing would be the table of unleavened bread. Then
the table of seven candle sticks and finally the alter of incense. From here
you enter through the curtain to the Holy of Hollies and only the High priest
was allowed to enter this place and once every year with blood to atone for the
sins of the nation. In here you would find the Ark of the Covenant that
contained tablets of the Ten Commandments, the pot of Manna and Aaron’s rod
that budded. The whole this was awesome!
After this
Bethlehem, where Jesus was born from. It has all these beautiful replicas of
baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph plus the shepherd, Angels and the wise men with
their camels. It all looks beautiful.
Then,
Nazareth where Jesus grew from. It has a very short entrance depicted in the
bible times as the eye of the needle; Camels had to stay outside thus Jesus
giving the parable being so hard for the camel to go through the eye of the
needle.
Then Galilee
where Jesus preached occasionally, there is a replica of an old boast which is
believed to be the very boat that Jesus used when he was preaching on the same
lake over 2000 years ago.
Then
Jerusalem as it was in the days of Jesus, with all the beautiful places like
the Solomon Temple which though it was destroyed by the Babylonians, it was rebuilt
by Herod and it was very beautiful covered with Gold. This was later destroyed by
the Romans under the command of Emperor Titus and in order to remove all the
Gold they removed it brick by brick and stone by stone just like Jesus had
prophesied.
This is amazing!
Then we saw where Jesus made the first miracle of turning water into wine at the wedding of Cana of Galilee.
It was great
to visit other Bible sites like the upper room where Jesus had the Passover feast
with his disciples. We literally had Holy Communion here. And a priest in the
picture of Jesus “appeared suddenly” and led us through Holy Communion service
and “disappeared” after the service. Then we entered the garden of Gethsemane
where Jesus prayed and was betrayed by Judas.
Then
Gologotha where he was crucified and buried and finally raised from the dead.
We saw the place where he ascended to heaven and angels said that just as you
have seen go to heaven, in the same way he will come back. “Thank you Lord
Jesus for the sacrifice you made for my salvation”
The entire
tour was summed up with a presentation at Holy Land Experience church, where
these people acted the life of Jesus. It was great.
At the end
of the days, I said this was worth it. Thank God my friends Gerry and Melinda
came up with this plan; it was both educating and inspirational. Glory to God!
Before
I left Florida, my friends took me to this part called The Dinosaur World. It has
so many replicas of these giant animals that are believed to have lived on
earth millions of years ago. The Bible in the book of Job talks about some of
these giant animals and it is believed they were the first kind of animals to
live on earth.
We
toured around and saw different kinds of these giant animals. Paul, my son
loves Dinosaurs and he comes home every day with a different story about these
special animals, so I took so many pictures for him. Daily many people come to
this park that is well taken care of just to see what these amazing animals
looked like.
They
say that long ago, Archeologists found fossils of these enormous animals and
they could tell how big they were and possibly how they looked and the kind of
life they lived. They say most of these were meat eaters whereas others would
feed on vegetation. It is assumed that most of them would eat up other
Dinosaurs. Most of them lived in the woods, a few lived in water. Some of them
had wings though they could not fly. All of them were big reptiles. They say
they lived for so many years.
They
say that there was an earthquake millions of years ago that changed the atmospheric
conditions making it hard for these animals to live and hence led to their
extinction.
It
was amazing to go through this amazing park with all these replicas and each
had a description of what type of Dinosaur that was and how it would live.
Whereas it is hard to tell what type of bodies they had, from the appearance of
their bones and all other discoveries about these animals, scientists could
tell what type of bodies these animals possibly had. Whatever it is they look
beautiful. Some of them had short fore legs with big strong hind legs. Meat eaters
had sharp teeth and claws by which they would tear into the flesh of their
catch.
There
was another part that shows how the bones looked like when they were dug up
from the sand. These animals were simply too big.
friends Gerry and Melinda and it
was now time to go to my next destination, Virginia.
