What Arabs Were Doing in the Desert Near The Time of Christ

Wow, what an incredible day Thursday has been. It is 9 p.m. and you all are just getting done with lunch. We got up this morning and travelled to the Jordanian border at Acaba. Acaba was one of the first cities to fall from the Ottoman empire during World War II. The British took the city with the help of some of the Arab tribes. The story is told in the movie, Lawrence of Arabia. Acaba was once the location of the Israeli fleet during the kings period after Solomon. Solomon had copper mines in the area. After presenting our passports to Israeli’s three times, and the Jordanians three times just to get into Jordan, we were on our way with a Jordanian tour guide. We travelled down a major highway that the United States paid for to get weapons to Saddam Hussein when we were helping them fight the Iranians back in the 1980’s. We eventually came to the King’s Highway which is the same Kings Highway mention in the Old Testament. We were officially wandering in the same wilderness as the Israelites when they were on their way to the land of promise. I think they would have been jealous of our tour bus. When we arrived at the modern city of Petra there were five star hotels and such but it was still a mountainous desert. All of southern Israel and Jordan  is a desert that has mountain ranges like the Mountains of Edom that over look Eilat. The ancient city of Petra was rediscovered in the 19^th century by the modern world after it had been closed by an earthquake back in 700 A.D. The city was a travel stop between Syria and Egypt and the tribe that created the city ( the Nabataean’s) carved all of the structures out of the sandstone. Eventually they were influenced by Greek and Roman architecture and famous citizens of those empires that visited them. Their influences resulted in a synthesis of architectural designs. The trip was about a mile and a half downhill past many sights you saw if you watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The trip back up was another thing altogether. Some of the less able in our group rode “chariots” down and back, but the LCBC crowd walked it both ways. I hope you enjoy the pictures. We have video that we will try to successfully upload as soon as possible.