Sunday Special： The Holy Land
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
167.27393
Summary
On this episode of the Human Events special, we talk about our trip to the Holy Land with the rest of our family, what it was like to be in the middle of it all, and what we learned along the way.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard for special edition of Human Events, the Human
00:00:06.520
Events special, The Holy Land. Kevin and I are here in downtown Jerusalem and we've
00:00:14.280
just spent one week here in the Holy Land together. Now the rest of the family was
00:00:20.760
with us, the boys, my wife, the beautiful and lovely Tanya Tay, my parents got them
00:00:26.320
out, even got dad, we even got dad off the couch, you know, got him in, he came out
00:00:31.420
and he walked and climbed all over, all over every site we took him to here like
00:00:40.240
a champ, like an absolute champ. Great with the kids, everything else, but we just
00:00:44.920
wrapped that up and before we wanted to go, right, yep, to my sister, and before we
00:00:52.840
wanted to go, we wanted to sit down and really have a discussion for the show,
00:00:59.140
we've been filming things along the way, so we'll be able to show you some of those
00:01:01.960
experiences that we had, but really give you an understanding of why it was that
00:01:06.560
we came to the Holy Land, what we experienced while we were here, some of
00:01:11.440
the, of course, if you remember when we went to Ukraine, I focused more on the
00:01:16.900
political military situation, whereas Kev focused more on sort of what was going on
00:01:22.000
the ground, how are supplies run, how do people live, how are things built and
00:01:27.040
rebuilt and the construction and all of this, and of course, that's still going
00:01:31.300
on as we record this, even the city of Micolaev, where we visited, is still under
00:01:36.940
attack as of right now, but this time around, we had the opportunity, thanks to
00:01:43.060
Turning Point USA, to bring us to the Holy Land, and so I'm so gracious for
00:01:48.620
turning point for having the ability to help us out with that, so essentially what
00:01:53.660
we did was a figure eight, if you want to think of it that way, we sort of did the
00:02:00.680
Dead Sea, then up to Galilee, then back down to the site of Christ's baptism, and then
00:02:08.580
back across to Jerusalem for the end, so let's say, so now I've been here once
00:02:14.120
before, just to set the stage, so Tanya and I did our honeymoon here in Israel, but
00:02:19.700
Kevin, this is your first time to the Middle East at all, so tell me, what was it
00:02:25.160
like, what was it like just getting off the airplane, getting in the car, and
00:02:30.740
driving across the desert that first night, because we drove all the first
00:02:34.400
night all the way from the airport in Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport, all the way to
00:02:38.960
the Dead Sea, and then we slept on the shores of the Dead Sea that first night.
00:02:43.160
Well, I tell you, I mean, we've done so much on this, on this adventure, it's hard
00:02:48.800
to even recall actually, but the trip driving over, like a blur, yeah, like a
00:02:54.080
blur, it feels like I've been here like a month, and a lot of people are actually
00:02:57.380
saying that too, but that's great, I mean, driving over though, it was, it was
00:03:02.480
pretty beautiful, I mean, clear skies, the stars were out, like, and you could tell we
00:03:07.280
were definitely in the desert, not too much light pollution there, no light
00:03:11.040
pollution, nope, but yeah, it was a lot of fun driving over, and of course, of
00:03:15.820
course, I cranked, it felt like when we were in Denver, or like California, like, it
00:03:20.280
wasn't like the Swiss Alps, but you could see like the rolling hills, and yeah, it
00:03:26.360
was nighttime, of course, however, the one difference was that I found whatever
00:03:32.340
Jordanian radio channel I could find, then plugged it in and cranked it all the
00:03:37.280
way to the max, the entire two hours of driving. I had no idea what they were saying, but.
00:03:43.040
I have a theory that it's actually all just one song on a loop, that was my theory, it's
00:03:48.160
like house music, you know, where they just do the one song, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop,
00:03:52.280
loop, loop, loop, and of course, dad's sitting there. You got rhythm, you got rhythm.
00:03:55.040
And we had dad in the car too, but that was the whole experience, what are you, what are you
00:04:00.040
stopping here for, no, turn, no, go this way, no, go that way, what are you doing?
00:04:06.800
If any of you guys out there have a Polish dad, or, you know, Slavic father,
00:04:14.800
Like, yeah, no, dad, I'm good, I got, I got, got Captain Google right here is taking care
00:04:19.800
of me, got the SIM card, you know, I've been here before as a matter of fact, so, you know,
00:04:30.560
He just got his, he just got his hip replaced, I'm like, dad, do you want to sit up front?
00:04:33.960
Like, I asked him like three times, he's like, no, no, I'm fine.
00:04:36.240
No, he wouldn't do it, no, he wouldn't do it, he wouldn't sit up front.
00:04:39.560
Yes, oh, my knee, oh, this is so cramped back here.
00:04:43.160
I said, dad, because when we stopped, so we finally stopped, the first place we stopped cutting across
00:04:48.760
the, right, so we finally stopped at Beersheba, the first place, which was, of course, where
00:04:55.560
Abraham dug the well, it was a watering hole back in those times, back in biblical times,
00:05:01.240
and it, in a sense, it kind of still is today, because that's, that's your main stop while
00:05:05.800
you're going across the desert, so I thought that was interesting.
00:05:08.120
It made me think a lot about how, so when you, when you come to the Holy Land, you actually traverse
00:05:12.920
this terrain, you, it gives you an understanding of the Bible that it's hard to have without
00:05:22.280
having this, this tactile feel of what it actually means to cross the desert of Samaria, what it
00:05:29.160
means to go from Galilee to Judea, to Jerusalem, to come from Nazareth, to, to be in Bethlehem,
00:05:36.920
right, this idea that, you know, when you're, when you're coming through a desert, and there's only
00:05:42.280
one well, you know, of course, everybody's going to be fighting over that, of course, that's going
00:05:47.800
to be extremely important, it's going to be something that it makes sense, right, so it makes
00:05:54.040
sense why that well, or Jerusalem, or some of the other main sites have become so many friction points
00:06:00.760
back then, even as, in a sense, as they still are today, maybe not for the same exact reasons,
00:06:05.880
but early on, you really get that understanding of the whole Jordan River Valley, and then some
00:06:11.320
of these wells, some of these areas where you could have, could have water, could have any, just
00:06:16.520
any kind of sustenance, because you got to imagine, they're not, you know, they're not driving the Mazda,
00:06:21.000
or, I don't even remember what we had, all the way through the desert, they had nothing, they had camels,
00:06:25.720
they had donkeys, and that's it. Horses? Not really. Probably not. So you're just traveling,
00:06:32.760
you're just traveling through, that's all you got, so it gives you, it gives you more of an
00:06:36.840
appreciation, too, for understanding, for us, it was a long night, but imagine them actually having
00:06:43.000
to sleep out there. But then again, that's where the desert fathers were, right, from the book of
00:06:47.560
Hebrews. Exactly. Where they gained much of their wisdom and experience. Well, you learn a lot,
00:06:54.120
right, and there were some days where, you know, you couldn't even compare it, but just some days where we
00:06:59.400
were out walking a lot and getting up, maybe we should, we should even talk about the next,
00:07:06.760
the next, well, we'll talk about it in a second, but what it was like getting a little taste of that,
00:07:12.920
just a little taste of that, nothing, nothing major, but what was it like when, I remember,
00:07:19.560
because we stayed in that guest house that we found on the Dead Sea, and I don't think you realized how
00:07:24.440
close we were when you woke up. I did. So what was it like waking up, stepping outside the front door
00:07:31.240
of the courtyard, turning right, and then boom, palm trees, the Dead Sea is sitting right there,
00:07:39.800
Jordan across in the mountains. Yeah, it was, it was breathtaking. I mean, honestly, I went out
00:07:46.120
the night. That's right, you went out the night off, right, you're at the night off. It was a full moon,
00:07:50.280
I brought my rosary with me, went out on this little man-made peninsula, watched the guys working,
00:07:55.960
and I got to see all like the calcified rocks along the shoreline. It was pretty moving,
00:08:03.640
and the wind was blowing, it was very romantic, I get a criticism of that, I'm a romantic kind of guy,
00:08:11.160
but the atmosphere was very special and moving. But yeah, I just took my time out there and prayed,
00:08:20.120
and it felt very different. And that's kind of the theme of this whole trip. You can ask the whole
00:08:27.320
group. Everybody is saying like, this is a lot different than any other previous event. There's
00:08:34.040
like a spirit in the air. Absolutely. And you, well, even there, that's the lowest, the lowest point,
00:08:40.840
the Dead Sea, the lowest surface point on the face of the earth that you can walk. And then that sea,
00:08:47.000
of course, doesn't hold anything. But in the southern end, we were staying on the southern end,
00:08:51.480
and they actually have a lot of excavation that goes on there to get the salt out. So that you get it
00:08:57.320
up, and that's what we saw was dredgers and excavators, and they were just pulling the salt out.
00:09:01.080
Yeah. I didn't read too much about that yet. But there's apparently some work being done now to
00:09:05.960
convert it to energy. There is. I forget the name of it, but that came up as I was researching.
00:09:13.000
So they've divvied up with Jordan, who's on the other side. And they're finding ways to actually
00:09:18.360
try to turn that into electric plants. Because of course, energy, just like before, living in the
00:09:26.680
desert has its own set of realities that you have to figure out if you're going to spend time out
00:09:32.920
there. It's unlike any other body of water I've ever been in. I put my hand in and it felt like
00:09:37.960
there's like, there's, remember back in the day, there's machines like you put your hand in and it
00:09:41.880
like covers it in wax? No. Okay. Well, what were you doing covering your hand in wax? Not a lot of things.
00:09:49.400
Oh, okay. But it just felt like oil or like hyssop, anointing oil. What else did you get waxed, Kev?
00:09:58.520
What else did you get waxed? Well, I got something on my shoulder last night. Yeah,
00:10:03.160
I know you got something. Yeah, I heard mom found out about that. You might have to subscribe to get to
00:10:07.320
see that. Oh, subscribe. That's an Instagram exclusive? Yeah. Okay. Did you actually film it?
00:10:12.360
A number of people did. Yeah. Oh, boy. Here we go. Instagram exclusive. Coming out pretty soon.
00:10:19.800
Okay. I've got some new bumper stickers. So, so we're coming through the Dead Sea. You wake up
00:10:27.160
first morning, we're there. And I think we got a great photo actually of mom and dad
00:10:33.960
just sort of walking towards the Dead Sea. And I just thought it was great for them,
00:10:42.360
for everybody. And then I would say this for the rest of the trip, but
00:10:47.880
you got to come at least once. You got to come at least once, see it, experience it,
00:10:53.080
walk those stones, see those places. There's so many variables. Like everywhere kind of is like so
00:11:00.440
close to a border. And it's like, you look across and you see Jordan and multiple times throughout
00:11:08.520
the trip. But there's, yeah, so many moments like that. It's not big. Right. It's not,
00:11:13.560
the whole country is not about the size of New Jersey. Yeah, Jersey. It's not, it's not big. I mean,
00:11:18.200
you can do the whole thing up and down in a week, 10 days, give or take. But then the next,
00:11:24.920
so it was, it was just great to see mom and dad though, being there with them. And Tanya and I had
00:11:30.680
come before. And so going in the, going in the Dead Sea, he's got a story behind that. But yeah,
00:11:37.880
I don't like the Dead Sea. I'm not a fan, not even a fan. The Dead Sea, lots of history, lots of culture,
00:11:44.920
culture, health. I understand. Personally, not a fan, not a fan. We're in here last time,
00:11:55.080
five years ago, never going back. Never, ever. Why? Because I jumped in and everybody said,
00:12:04.680
just go ahead and jump in. And then boom, I had that stuff on me like a chrism for a week,
00:12:11.800
stinging my eyes. Every little scrape and scratch you have, not a fan, put on the mud, enjoy it.
00:12:19.480
At least they have rinsing stations now. They didn't have that before five years ago. Not a fan,
00:12:25.400
never going back. The Dead Sea, take it or leave it. But the way I look at it is, God said that he
00:12:32.360
doesn't want any living thing in there and we ought to abide by it. I shaved the night before. Not even a
00:12:38.280
little bit of a fan. It was on fire. You shaved the night before you went in. I didn't know.
00:12:42.760
Got our genius over here, folks. Real smart guy. You're supposed to be like his holy and sacred
00:12:47.720
water and soothing for your skin. Everybody sells it at the mall. I was like, yeah, let's do it.
00:12:54.120
Yeah. No, the clay, the mud clay is supposed to be good for your skin. It felt like mace.
00:12:58.920
But they have, I would still recommend it though. Just don't get it in your eyes.
00:13:05.240
That being said, don't drink it. I don't have any room to speak because the last time that I went,
00:13:10.120
the first time when we were here on our honeymoon, I go in up to my knees. I said,
00:13:14.280
oh, this is great. This is great. It's very rocky. So the stones are all over.
00:13:20.040
And then Tanya, of course, is filming. She goes, jump in, jump in, jump in.
00:13:24.360
Oh, so you started putting it on Tanya. No, no, no. She said, no, hold on. She says it. No,
00:13:29.000
she does. And I have it on footage. Okay. So don't even try to say I'm putting it on her
00:13:32.600
because she had, she said it, but we go through. And of course, me being me, I got to dive in.
00:13:40.040
So I dove in and just rules don't apply to Poso. Total force of habit. Open my eyes underwater in the
00:13:49.240
dead sea. And long story short, I was blind for about four hours after that. Um, Tanya had to drive
00:13:58.920
home. Uh, yeah, that was not a good experience. And I, this time around, I think I put my hand in
00:14:09.080
and that was, that was good enough for me. Yeah. I was fine. No, I didn't do the black face with the
00:14:14.040
mud or any of that. That did work though. That did work. And they have hoses of like regular water. You
00:14:19.000
could wash it all off too. They didn't have that before. When I was here five years ago,
00:14:23.240
they've actually built up. So we went to, um, Halea beach and we're, we're skipping around
00:14:29.160
a little bit for those of you who know the geography, but, um, they, that wasn't as built
00:14:35.000
up before. And they had already had like the, you know, the restaurants and everything at the top,
00:14:39.640
but the way that it, they had those nice showers and places where you could just wash off. That was
00:14:44.760
not there five years ago. So even like right on the dock. Yeah. Had that, had that been around before,
00:14:51.880
had that been around, uh, that in the first instance, probably would have, would have felt
00:14:56.920
a little better about it. But yeah, I remember I also, um, either, I think I cut my foot on a rock
00:15:02.280
and that thing opened up in the dead sea. And that was, that was an experience,
00:15:07.160
but being able to float on it, check the box, did the dead sea. Amazing. And remember, of course,
00:15:13.160
as we know, connect it back the dead sea. This is also the location, uh, that we are told in the
00:15:21.000
Bible east of Abraham's tent is the location of Sodom and Gomorrah. Correct. Yes. So this, this was the
00:15:30.120
area where, and there, there is a huge pillar of salt. Um, it's like rock salt at this point
00:15:36.200
that you can go past. I don't think we went there this time, but I was looking it up and they actually
00:15:40.840
refer to it as Lot's wife. It's right there. Yeah. And our, and this is the crazy thing is that
00:15:49.560
archeological studies, this one that just came out a couple of months ago, actually shows that
00:15:55.080
scientifically they've found that there was a city, there was a tell pretty much in that exact
00:16:03.320
location right off the dead sea that about 4,000 years ago was destroyed by a meteor that flew in from
00:16:14.520
the sky and then exploded over the city with the force of a hundred percent with the force of a thousand
00:16:22.440
Hiroshima atomic bombs. So a thousand Hiroshima's that we've actually found evidence that 4,000 years
00:16:30.520
ago, this event did take place. They call it a cosmic airburst that destroyed an entire city
00:16:37.640
at the, in the, in the exact location that the Bible describes where Sodom and Gomorrah were.
00:16:45.400
Where is this from? What reference is that? This is a new study that just come out a couple of months
00:16:50.520
ago. Okay. And there's been a lot of evidence and a lot of theorizing that this city in the past was
00:16:58.120
the city of Sodom connecting the two. Now the archeological survey that was done here wasn't done
00:17:06.120
from any perspective of trying to connect it to Sodom, but they did say that yes, they're almost certain
00:17:12.200
that the city that they're looking at was destroyed 4,000 years ago by a cosmic airburst, by a meteor.
00:17:20.520
Yeah. Yeah. Righteous. Yeah. So, and again, it's exactly where the Bible says it was.
00:17:28.840
And so, of course, for the non-believers, they would say, well, clearly the meteor hit the city and then...
00:17:40.120
And so, they would say the meteor hit the city and then the story was written after the fact,
00:17:48.840
you know, as a way of explaining what happened. Okay. Okay. Okay. Makes sense.
00:17:51.880
And so, for believers, we would also point, we would point out though that this has been a story
00:18:03.560
for thousands and thousands of years and now science is just catching up.
00:18:09.640
Like the Dead Sea Scrolls. I mean, we get that later.
00:18:12.360
Which, well, I mean, we were there. So, right before we went into the Dead Sea, because we were,
00:18:17.480
for those following the geography of this, we stopped at the Cave of Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were
00:18:23.000
found. There's various stories about how they were discovered. But the idea was back in the 1940s,
00:18:29.240
they went into this cave and they found that this group of Jewish...
00:18:36.120
Shepherds. Well, no, no, no. I'm talking about the Essenes. So, the Essenes had preserved these
00:18:41.000
scrolls at this time and did so in such a way on leather so that, and because, and because again,
00:18:49.560
this is right off the Dead Sea, one of the driest places in the entire world. So, because they were,
00:18:55.880
it was on leather, they were preserved in clay jars, and it's one of the driest and most arid
00:19:01.240
places in the world, plus in a cave, so protected from the elements, that these 2,000 year old
00:19:09.640
scrolls were found and to the point where you could even still read them. It's ancient Hebrew,
00:19:15.960
but you could still read them and they contain the oldest copies of the Bible that we still have to have
00:19:21.720
ever been found. Yeah, just to tie in the fact, like, the theory comes out and then about the
00:19:27.320
cosmic air burst, but they find the Dead Sea Scrolls and then bring the oldest translations
00:19:36.360
to the Dead Sea Scrolls, put them together, and the words match exactly.
00:19:41.240
Right, that's exactly right. So, they brought the translations of, you know, the current
00:19:51.000
Bible as we have it and compared it to Dead Sea Scrolls. So, obviously, if there were some,
00:19:55.960
hey, these are receipts, and so we'd now be able to know these are the closest to the actual source
00:20:01.880
writings that exist. And it turns out that, guess what? It was the same writing. So, that means that
00:20:07.640
the process of the preservation of the Bible that went on through the centuries, through the ages,
00:20:14.520
the Middle Ages, and in the Middle Ages, in Europe, for example, I mean, it really was the only people
00:20:19.960
that were doing reading and writing. That was the priests. That was the monks. That was the monasteries.
00:20:25.880
They were the ones, the Franciscans, the Benedictines, they were the ones that were keeping all of this
00:20:31.320
going on for hundreds of years in that point and really carried that light all the way through
00:20:37.400
those ages. Yeah. So, you didn't have, you know, printing presses. And this is where you get your
00:20:43.880
illuminated manuscripts and your codexes. Well, illuminated stained glass, too.
00:20:47.880
Stained glass, that's true. For people who were illiterate. Right.
00:20:50.600
And the magnificence of the structure itself, the Gothic architecture, and mostly just the stained glass.
00:20:58.760
I don't want to get into, like, different styles, but the paintings, the large paintings.
00:21:04.600
Or, or at the Vatican, the statue, everything. Everything, yeah. It's the most forged art work
00:21:10.280
in the world. They relied on art rather than literacy. Mm-hmm. And so, the, the point,
00:21:17.720
though, is that they were able to find these scrolls. The scrolls matched. So, the, so it says,
00:21:23.800
hey, the translations were correct. It was handed down to us properly. We can now go back. We can
00:21:29.000
roll back that clock another 2,000 years. They were even scared to publish it. Yeah.
00:21:32.200
Remember you said that, too? For, like, four or five years. Well, that's, that's pretty much any
00:21:35.640
academic study, though. Sure. They'll be that way. But, if the Bible was, had different stories in
00:21:41.880
the beginning, it would change, change the foundation. Well, there is one interesting angle to this, that
00:21:50.200
one of the, one of the scrolls found at Qumran, of course, they had the scroll of Isaiah. They had
00:21:54.360
all the major prophets, but one of the scrolls found at Qumran was the Book of Enoch. You mentioned
00:22:01.000
that. Yeah. And the tour guide said that was a little balagan. Yeah, he said it was a balagan. So,
00:22:08.760
one of the issues with this, of course, is that the Book of Enoch is considered apocrypha by every
00:22:13.640
major church, every major, um, Jewish sect that doesn't, you know, doesn't consider it to be valid.
00:22:20.360
But, but, except, I believe the Ethiopians is the only one. Ah. But, the Essenes clearly thought
00:22:28.680
that there was some, there was some importance to it, and so they kept it safe. And one of the
00:22:33.640
interesting pieces of the Book of Enoch, and we can find in the New Testament and Old Testament,
00:22:38.600
there are references and words that seem to have been taken from this Book of Enoch, which,
00:22:46.040
you know, that makes sense. I mean, I've got books at home that aren't the Bible, right?
00:22:49.800
Sure. You know, so it certainly was something that was floating around at this time. But,
00:22:55.640
probably one of the most, um, one of the passages in it that stands out the most, and one of the
00:23:02.200
writings, is the fact that it talks about the dealings of the creation of demigods. This idea that
00:23:11.240
fallen angels were co-mingling, if you will, with human women, and creating a race of
00:23:23.080
hybrid beings that, and if you go to Genesis 6, Genesis 6 says that these were the Nephilim,
00:23:30.920
and the Nephilim, or which, which the King James... Not the Anunnaki? Not the Anunnaki,
00:23:36.040
no. The Nephilim, which the King James Version translates as giants. Yeah. That they were the
00:23:43.560
great heroes and the great warriors of old. And then there's, there's other, you know, versions,
00:23:49.960
there's other sort of divisions of the, subdivisions of the Nephilim. The Rephaim is,
00:23:54.680
is one of these. And there's, there's thought that Goliath was one of the, one of the descendants of the
00:24:00.200
Nephilim at one point. And it says that this was in, in the days before the flood. Hmm. So it could
00:24:09.000
be, and there's a lot of scholarship on this, it could be that one of the reasons of the flood was
00:24:15.560
to wipe out the Nephilim, in the first instance, because of what, because of, because they were never
00:24:22.200
intended to be created. That this was something that was outside of God's creation, that, um, that the
00:24:29.080
angels, and the fallen angels, and humans were creating together. I guess that would fit into
00:24:34.360
the context of, like, the world was, like, covered with sin. Mm-hmm. Like, it's plausible. Yeah, right.
00:24:41.320
And then, so the theory goes a little bit further, even, that the reason that the fallen angels were
00:24:47.320
doing this was because they knew that the Messiah was to come from humanity, and that, to come from men.
00:24:56.040
And that they knew that the Messiah would have domination over them. And so because they didn't
00:25:03.880
want that to happen, because they thought that maybe they could put a, put a wrench in
00:25:12.280
God's design. Because, of course, you can't. It's interesting. If you try, if you want to overthrow
00:25:17.640
God, you want to, they talk about the rebellion of heaven. So, of course. Okay. You can't, you
00:25:23.320
couldn't defeat God, right? No, nothing could defeat. What are you going to do? You got to throw
00:25:28.120
something at him? You know, you know, you can't, but you could come into creation. And, of course,
00:25:34.200
we know the first instance of, of being deceptive, the serpent, tempting you with sin. Of course, these
00:25:40.760
are, these are ways to defile creation and to tempt humans into sin. But another way that, at one point,
00:25:51.160
the Bible says, and this is, Genesis 6 is in the Bible, the Nephilim. And this is referring to this,
00:25:57.880
this idea that a hybrid race was created in order to,
00:26:01.720
in order to try to stop the creation of the Messiah. You keep mentioning the word creation,
00:26:10.920
too, though. But what did Noah bring on the ark? Right. And what didn't he bring? What didn't he
00:26:17.240
bring? Yes. We all know who took out Goliath now, right? King David. Who just got back from there.
00:26:22.920
Who just visited his tomb. That's right. So, so this, this is a connection. This is a connection to
00:26:27.880
some of the stuff that goes even further. I mean, everything here is connected. That's
00:26:32.120
after the flood. That's after the flood. It was after the flood. And so, the theory goes a little
00:26:37.640
bit further, even, that says that if you, that the book of Joshua, if you take this reading of it,
00:26:43.800
then that means the book of Joshua, they're not just fighting other tribes. They're fighting giants.
00:26:49.080
And they're clearing the land of Cana of these giants. And so that, that some had survived and
00:26:57.800
maybe not giants in the, you know, sort of cartoon version, but maybe just larger, stronger, more
00:27:05.080
powerful, perhaps having some kind of supernatural or spiritual. Yeah. Because even in our, our life,
00:27:13.240
not our lifetime, but Andre the giant wasn't even a hundred years ago. So there's two, there's,
00:27:18.680
it's gigantism. There's two translation, like mutation. Even on, on Goliath, there's two
00:27:24.680
translations of his height. One of the translations has his height as about six foot nine. So big,
00:27:33.480
very big. The other translation has his height as about nine foot nine, which would be an actual giant.
00:27:42.760
Yeah. Something not human. And so it's, it's just interesting take. And I don't know that I
00:27:51.160
endorse it, but I'm that that's the explanation of it. But, um, getting back to it. So away from the
00:27:57.560
Dead Sea Scrolls, as we're going through the land, um, by the way, we did go to Mount Bental. So I did look
00:28:03.960
for King Og while I was up there in King Og's bed, another one of the potential giants.
00:28:08.280
The land of Bashan, um, that one of the, so we, we climbed Masada. We did. We climbed Masada. We
00:28:17.160
definitely did. Well, actually that was one of my first reflections of seeing the history of Masada,
00:28:21.480
like, and reading Maccabees along the way is that these people fled from Romans, but they still
00:28:30.280
fought with such ferocity, with nothing. They didn't have cell phones. They didn't have technology.
00:28:37.480
Like, they barely had water. Um, they had food, they had family, and they had traditions.
00:28:48.360
Like, defying the king. Let's explain what Masada is for people who don't know what it is.
00:28:53.240
So Masada is this huge castle fortress. Um, it's actually a resort of King Herod the Great
00:29:00.040
that was built on the banks of the Dead Sea. It was built just after, or, well, I should say it was
00:29:06.920
built just before the time of Christ. So it's about 2,000 years old. It's concurrent with Christ.
00:29:12.200
But this revolt that Kevin was talking about took place just after about 70 AD, one of the Jewish
00:29:18.760
revolts. And this is, of course, when the temple was destroyed by the Romans. First temple was
00:29:23.640
destroyed by the Babylonians. But during this time, um, King Herod had built a giant palace
00:29:32.920
on top of a mountain, all the way out in the desert, all the way overlooking the Dead Sea.
00:29:37.320
And it's this huge, and it's still there today. The ruins are still there. You can go, you can visit.
00:29:43.240
There's a path on the way up that you can climb. It's called the snake path.
00:29:46.760
We did it. We walked it. We did the snake path.
00:29:49.640
There's another, there's another path that's even longer. It takes like three hours to get up.
00:29:53.720
And then, then there's the Roman ramp, which is around the backside. So when the Romans attack,
00:29:57.640
they built this ramp. You can still see it today. And there's a cable car, of course, for the kids.
00:30:02.440
But, um, what did it, and, and so when, when the, the zealots who were, who were there
00:30:11.800
essentially staying away from the Romans, they were able to hold out for three years,
00:30:19.480
three years under siege from the Romans in this palace on the top of a mountain in the middle of the
00:30:27.560
desert, middle of the desert with nothing other than the supplies that they had brought with them.
00:30:33.560
So they had a cistern up there, but no, no running water. Keep in mind, just on the top of Masada.
00:30:43.880
Yeah. It just, it just brought this up too. Like this was from the tomb of King David, um, just to like
00:30:50.440
emphasize like how they fought, but it says, and I should merit to be bold like a leopard,
00:30:58.760
light as an eagle, run like a, like a deer and strong as a lion to do the desire of our father in heaven.
00:31:06.200
That's, I don't know if that's, is that from Maccabees, but it's from, from this prayer. They give it,
00:31:11.640
to give it to everybody that enters. But comparatively to the United States of America,
00:31:17.640
and like, if we had an enemy force, like attack us, we kind of mentioned it in the last podcast, but
00:31:26.280
like, where's our unity? Where's our like pride? And if anything, it's a fantastic example.
00:31:34.760
You probably have half the people in the U S basically say, oh, well, it's probably better than
00:31:39.080
our stupid racist, uh, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, uh, capitalist government. And they,
00:31:49.480
you'd almost think that some of the people in the U S today might, might welcome a change of government.
00:31:54.920
Right. Right. Which of course is, as you go through the Holy land, you, you find out that
00:32:01.800
one of the pieces of history here. And then, and obviously gets into the current situation is that,
00:32:09.080
you know, we are, or this land has gone through so many changes in terms of who's in charge of it,
00:32:15.080
whether it be, whether it be the Israelites, whether it be, uh, the Babylonians, whether it be the
00:32:20.600
Neo-Babylonians, whether it be Rome, whether it be Byzantium, whether it be the Ottoman Turks,
00:32:25.160
the British. Okay. And now it is a sovereign state again. And so it's, it's really a story that,
00:32:33.000
of just constant cycles of change. It's an example of having faith and your traditions till the end,
00:32:42.280
like how, how the battle ended, even when the Romans came, they did not surrender.
00:32:47.880
No, they did not. And so at the end, rather than surrender, rather than being taken into captivity,
00:32:54.040
they did, they decided to take their own lives in Masada. And it was, I think there were some,
00:33:00.520
some women and children were the only ones at the very end who were left when the Romans came up.
00:33:07.320
So we climbed it and we made sure that we weren't, we weren't taking no cable car. That's for sure.
00:33:15.640
And that being said, we took the snake path. Honestly, snake path wasn't that bad. I didn't
00:33:20.840
do you think it was that bad? No, it was easy. It was about a mile or, but maybe half a mile up and
00:33:26.440
it took us 35 minutes, I believe. 35 minutes. Yep. It was fine. I think I would say it was hot.
00:33:33.560
Wouldn't have, wouldn't take the kids and they say do it in the morning. We did around 8am.
00:33:37.880
Um, I don't know that I would have taken the kids, even Jack Jack at age four. Yeah,
00:33:42.040
though I did take him through Hezekiah. We did take both the kids through Hezekiah's tunnels. Yes,
00:33:46.040
we did. That's here in Jerusalem. Just an amazing experience. This ancient aqueduct under this,
00:33:54.520
under the old city of Jerusalem. But that's part of like actually doing a pilgrimage too. It's like
00:34:00.680
walking and that's kind of lost in the modern day, but like working and sacrificing as like a way of
00:34:07.720
penance and like a prayer to God, even without your words, without all like your beautiful phrases or
00:34:13.880
Instagram posts or whatever, just like just walking, you know, as like an offer to God,
00:34:20.280
like up the mountain and doing things like that. Hezekiah's tunnel, by the way,
00:34:25.800
the water comes up to your waist just about. Without accolades, right? Without accolades.
00:34:32.760
So I felt like it was, it was pure. And the kids loved it up there. They loved the,
00:34:39.800
they loved the castle. They loved the ruins. They were having a great time.
00:34:43.880
They loved Ein Gedi a little better. They did. And so after that, we went to
00:34:50.520
the beautiful and very special Oasis of Ein Gedi. And if you have time, if you're visiting the Dead Sea,
00:34:58.600
do not skip Ein Gedi. This was, so this was, by the way, the Oasis where King David hid out after King
00:35:07.560
Saul was going after him. And it's this gorgeous Oasis right off the, essentially the side of the Dead Sea,
00:35:16.040
about halfway down from the northern part of it. And you walk in and you climb through. It's, it's some of the most
00:35:22.760
pure fresh water that you'll ever see. And it's coming through the desert. It's filtered all the
00:35:32.040
way through, through the sandstone and it's fresh. So it's not like the salt water of the Dead Sea.
00:35:39.560
It's all fresh. I think it's the closest large fresh water source to anywhere near the Dead Sea.
00:35:45.000
And so there's trees there, there's plants and it's, and you walk up and there's a series, Ibex, that's right.
00:35:51.320
And there's a series of about, what, about like a dozen waterfalls as you go all the way up. And then
00:35:57.160
the final waterfall you arrive at is King David's waterfall. Yeah. And so we went through. It was fit
00:36:03.800
for a king. We went, it was fit for a king. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Quite majestic. So we went through
00:36:08.520
and we saw, we took the kids in and we, oh yeah, we went in the water. We did all of it. Yeah. And drank the
00:36:14.760
water and it's like bushes. I had like growing over the stream and they like cut through.
00:36:20.600
It created basically like a natural cave almost, like a natural cave and a tunnel that at some
00:36:25.800
point you had the, I was glad I had my waterproof boots, that you walk through the natural tunnel.
00:36:31.480
And then at one point, of course they, there was two routes and it said, one was the wet route,
00:36:36.440
one was the dry route. Yes. And we took Jack, I took Jack Jack on the wet route all the way up the
00:36:43.640
waterfalls. And then to the point where you actually had to use handholds just to climb up the face of
00:36:49.960
this waterfall. And I had him holding onto me like a spider monkey. Really? Yeah. I didn't go that path.
00:36:55.160
Yeah. You didn't go that path. I didn't. That's right. I didn't. That's all right. You know,
00:36:59.720
some, some of us go a little, a little extra, but you know, it's okay. It's okay.
00:37:11.640
I, yeah, I really enjoyed that. And, and to speak to just like nature and the desert fathers and having
00:37:18.360
nothing, like you still cannot escape the spirit. It was a quiet place. It was a very
00:37:24.520
spiritual place and you could just get in touch, get grounded. Um, you could easily pray. No,
00:37:32.840
no cell phone service, any of that stuff. So we finished up there. We, so King David's Oasis
00:37:43.000
hit the Dead Sea and then drove up through the night all the way north to
00:37:48.600
the Sea of Galilee. That we did. We get up to the Sea of Galilee. And of course, well, I guess we
00:37:57.960
stopped in Nazareth first, didn't we? Yeah. I was getting confused with Bethlehem.
00:38:01.320
In Nazareth, they have a, they have a great, um, sort of recreation. We had a cool recreated experience
00:38:07.880
of what it would be like to walk around the village in the biblical times, to eat a meal that would be
00:38:13.560
similar to Christ's meal. But then we went to really, I think the first holy site in Christianity
00:38:22.920
that we visited on this trip. And it is, when you pray the rosary, it's actually the very first one,
00:38:29.560
the very first mystery. First joyful mystery. First joyful mystery of the rosary. St. Gabriel.
00:38:34.120
The annunciation of Archangel Gabriel to Mary the handmaiden at a little, a little stream, a little
00:38:43.240
well, and they have Mary's grotto and where she said yes. So how did that feel? Actually knowing that
00:38:51.880
you were standing on the very hill where that took place? Where the word was made flesh? So in Latin,
00:39:00.520
it has the entire, the entire piece there. It was moving. I was beside myself. I couldn't help it.
00:39:09.320
I kneeled down and started, just started up the rosary and, uh, yeah, it just got really welled up and
00:39:18.760
I just stayed there. It's like sometimes, I don't know from my personal experience, but time stops and,
00:39:26.600
uh, you kind of feel like a weightlessness to you. I actually felt it earlier today too at the Western
00:39:32.120
Wall, um, which is interesting. But, uh, yeah, it was amazing. And then to have you guys come and join
00:39:41.320
me too, that was like a very, a very special moment for our family. Pray the rosary
00:39:46.840
right there and beautiful basilica, by the way, very completely international. Um, almost every
00:39:56.920
country of the world had a mosaic or a fresco that was, that's true of Mary, of Mary that was a
00:40:03.800
blessed mother. That's, um, that's shown there. So it's just incredible to see in a complete
00:40:08.680
outpouring of actual globalism. Yeah. That's the, that's the other kind of globalism. That's not
00:40:17.240
globalism. That's universalism. That's right. That's right. That's the difference. And so
00:40:21.640
put that in your pipe and smoke it. Fealty to the king of the universe and his mother. And so,
00:40:28.440
so after that, that was when we went to Galilee afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. And visited, did some
00:40:33.320
political stuff as well, went to, you know, political historical stuff, met with some IDF
00:40:37.960
soldiers. If anyone do something serious, we are the one who will take him down. We just, we don't just
00:40:44.840
go to the fence with a tank. I see. We had our grandfather, he was, he worked on American tanks
00:40:53.640
in World War II. Oh. He was a mechanic and part of a scout. So he would go out and, uh, help clear the
00:41:00.920
land, make sure the maps were correct. Uh, first armored division in North Africa during World War II.
00:41:07.480
Yeah. So I appreciate what you do. Got to, got to see one of their newer tanks, uh, Malkia tank,
00:41:14.040
got to go to the Golan Heights, which was, of course, obviously a highly disputed area, something
00:41:20.440
I'm very familiar with. We got to an outpost. Um, that is, so the Golan Heights, for those who don't
00:41:26.440
know, uh, Syria considers it occupied land. Israel considers it their land, having been won in the
00:41:31.960
Six-Day War, 1967, that it's right on the border, but the borders between Israel, Lebanon, and Syria.
00:41:40.440
So you look over one side, you see Lebanon. You look over the other side, you see Syria. It's right
00:41:44.920
there. Syria, of course, considers it to be occupied by Israel. And Megiddo, who stopped by too. We also
00:41:51.320
stopped by Megiddo. That's right. So Megiddo, of course, the site of Armageddon. So Megiddo is the
00:42:00.040
place of, in Revelation, where we are told will be the area where the armies of demons meet with the
00:42:09.160
armies of the Lord. And we're told that in the final days, that's where it will come.
00:42:13.640
It's intense. Great book to read about just the archaeological background on Megiddo because people
00:42:24.760
have been living on that hill for something like 10,000 years. And it goes all the way back to the
00:42:30.360
Stone Age. So there's a great book on it called The Source by James Michener, which I read. My mom
00:42:36.680
read as well. Mom read that actually on the way here. And it goes back and it's, it's a great narrative,
00:42:42.920
but it also kind of, so it's this, it's a book with an overall overarching narrative. The same
00:42:48.920
author who did Poland and Alaska and Texas, a bunch of South Pacific, a bunch of books.
00:42:55.800
You gave me a one. Yeah, I gave you this Poland one. That his, so the story starts with three
00:43:04.600
archaeologists who are working on the dig, but then it goes through and it tells you the story of one
00:43:10.040
family all the way back in the Stone Age. Then it cuts back to the archaeologists. Then you pick up
00:43:15.720
the family again in the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, biblical times, and it just kind of goes all the
00:43:21.640
way through following this one family all the way through into the 1970s, basically. Right. And so it's,
00:43:29.400
it's really interesting read. Highly recommend. And it's fun. It's a good, it's good read. It's long,
00:43:35.000
you know, that's probably the only issue. Audiobook, if you do audiobooks like I do,
00:43:38.200
is a good way to find it. But that was, uh, Tell Megiddo is essentially what, what he's talking
00:43:42.760
about in the book. We call it Tell McCore. And to add like, this whole time I've been like,
00:43:48.680
trying to figure like, what I can take away from this trip and what I can do as a contributor to
00:43:55.000
bring like my experience back to the United States. And one of the things I observed was
00:44:04.840
they take care of their, their river border, their border crossing.
00:44:09.080
Well, all their borders. And they have, they have a really nice wall on the other side.
00:44:13.480
Yeah. I mean, here's the thing, right? When you're, when you're talking about borders and border security,
00:44:18.120
go look at the way Israel takes care of their borders, both externally and internally,
00:44:22.200
because of course there's a massive wall that we drove past between, um, the Israeli controlled
00:44:29.080
territory and the West banks of this Palestinian, the Palestinian territories. And we're not talking
00:44:33.480
about this thing with like the slats and the little stuff, concrete barbed wire, watchtowers,
00:44:40.440
spotlights, the whole nine yards, this country, they're not messing around when it comes to that
00:44:45.480
stuff. Iron dome is another part of that, of course, for anti air defense or air defense.
00:44:52.280
But same deal with their Northern borders, their Southern borders, it's militarized. There's military
00:44:57.960
outposts on all of these things, no jokes when it comes to that stuff. And so when you're a country
00:45:03.240
that wants to defend its sovereignty, or a country that's wants to defend its nationalism, it's kind
00:45:07.080
of interesting how totally fine when it's a country like Israel, but, or, or Ukraine. But when we come
00:45:14.760
back to the United States and say, I want, I want to be able to defend my country that way, suddenly you get
00:45:20.600
labeled every name under the sun, you get all sorts of crazy things said about you and you're
00:45:26.760
wondering, wait, I'm, I'm confused because you said those things were good in those places. But now
00:45:32.600
I come back home and say, I want that and I want to defend my border and I'm not allowed to.
00:45:37.400
Yeah, that's what I wanted to highlight. And so Sea of Galilee, incredibly moving experience, just to
00:45:46.840
cut back to that. Town of Capernaum, Peter's home. Yeah. They, they have a church built over directly.
00:45:54.520
Yeah. What they believe was Christ's room in that church. And they have the beach that's right there.
00:46:01.640
The synagogue he went to. The synagogue he went to where he taught. And they have the beach right where
00:46:07.000
Jesus met St. Peter and St. Andrew. In fact, when he was still Simon, of course, when they were mending
00:46:13.640
their nets. Yeah. And he said to come and follow him, be fishers of men. I know. And dad was just
00:46:20.600
like, where's the poles? Like, I want to go, I want to go fishing. I wanted to go fishing. We're like, no,
00:46:24.440
no, no, no. Of course. It's not yet. It's a different, this is a different bank. We're
00:46:30.760
to be fishers of men, not fishing with the men. I definitely felt something walking on that beach.
00:46:35.880
And of course the water's still there. The sea's still there. Um, we, you know, archaeologically
00:46:40.840
speaking, some of the stuff is disputed. I get that. But you know, you're on the Sea of Galilee
00:46:47.240
when you're there, you know, that's the spot, you know, that's where it is. Yeah. And so,
00:46:53.160
yeah, I'm so grateful to just have a bit of the experience. And everybody has shared, like,
00:47:00.680
having moments at these sites. Um, it's very spiritual. So the one thing that, the one thing
00:47:09.720
to understand is that about 70% of the gospels actually takes place right there on the banks of
00:47:18.280
the Sea of Galilee. Yeah. And so going around the various towns, going around the various, uh,
00:47:23.240
settlements, of course, walking on the water, calling, quelling the storm, calming the storm,
00:47:28.520
that's all right there. So you got that got to me because that's one of my favorite pictures of
00:47:32.840
Jesus is from Peter's perspective where he's underwater. Of course. And Jesus is reaching
00:47:37.560
down. Yes. I don't know. I don't know who the artist is, but I would, I would, that'll always be
00:47:43.880
in my house. And that's all of us. That's all of us. There's still time for you. Oh, right. That's the
00:47:50.200
caption. There's still time. Yeah. Well, that's, that's what I wrote. Right. But I like that caption.
00:47:57.720
All sacred ground. You might, when, so for those times when you feel like you're
00:48:03.240
completely underwater, you're done for, Christ is right there. Yeah. Speaking of which, how about
00:48:09.400
those group baptisms and the, we got to, we got to go visit the actual site. So
00:48:16.680
coming down a little bit further, we, we hopped in the cars, we drove about two hours straight
00:48:23.640
through the desert and maybe about an hour, hour 45 from the Sea of Galilee down alongside the
00:48:29.320
river bank of the Jordan river, which is the border between Jordan and Israel, even today.
00:48:35.400
And we went to the actual site of Christ's baptism. And when you go there, it's still an international
00:48:42.440
border and it's not a border crossing. So you're not supposed to obviously cross the river, but it's,
00:48:47.400
it's not a wide river. It's probably, if you've ever been to the Rio Grande, it's about the same as
00:48:51.800
that, except here it's palm trees and reeds and going through the desert. But you see the Israeli flag
00:48:57.080
on one side and the Jordanian flag on the other soldiers here, soldiers here armed. But then you see
00:49:02.840
pilgrims, Christian pilgrims on both sides going in. And of course we went into the water there,
00:49:07.720
um, brought the family in, brought the kids in, set a prayer, set a blessing and, and beautiful
00:49:15.640
crusader churches right on the banks as well. Yeah.
00:49:22.440
Yeah. It just said every, every, every stop is just like something else. Like we even had like,
00:49:28.520
didn't you see, yeah, I was going to say, I was just sitting there waiting for you guys. And then
00:49:33.480
all of a sudden there's like, and these doves, white doves landed on the column next to me and
00:49:41.480
white doves, lo and behold, you know, what a coincidence, right? Just like in the gospel.
00:49:48.360
And you have really got a sense driving through
00:49:50.440
son with whom I am well pleased. Really got a sense driving through the desert there that just
00:50:02.840
a book that you've read, a story that you've known from childhood, both childhood, both our cases,
00:50:09.480
obviously of John the Baptist. So this is where John the Baptist was, was preaching and conducting his
00:50:15.000
ministry that they said that he lived out in the desert, eating nothing but locusts and
00:50:20.200
honey and wearing sackcloth. And when we were driving through some of those,
00:50:25.560
those desert hills and mountains, it, it was not hard for me to picture a guy living out in the
00:50:31.720
middle of the wilderness, because that's exactly what it looks like today.
00:50:34.600
It's the last gospel at the end of every, every Latin mass, you know, they say, I'm gonna
00:50:40.200
not butcher it, but it's like, I, I am not the light, but I came before the light to like show
00:50:46.520
who will come after me. His cousin. Right. At the end of every Latin mass, they said.
00:50:55.160
And so following that site of Christ baptism, we made it all the way into the city, the holy city of
00:51:06.040
Jerusalem itself. And so the very first morning, we are downtown. That's where we still are. And so the very
00:51:13.400
first morning of that, I, I woke up early, grabbed the kids and grabbed mom. And we walked all the way
00:51:21.240
down from where we're staying into the old city. And it was open already. It's about maybe 7 45 AM.
00:51:28.120
You know, no tourists were around and we got to have some quiet alone time in the church,
00:51:33.160
the Holy Sepulchre. And so the church, the Holy Sepulchre for folks who don't know
00:51:37.240
is the spot, the church that was built is it's a massive church complex, which is venerated and
00:51:46.680
recognized by both the Catholic church, the Orthodox church, as well as the Coptic church. And
00:51:54.120
as the site of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ, this was the church that St. Helena, who was
00:52:02.200
the mother of Emperor Constantine founded all the way back in 300, in the 300s AD. Then in 1000,
00:52:11.720
1006 AD, the caliphate came, the Muslim caliphate came and attacked the church of the Holy Sepulchre.
00:52:19.240
So they built this giant church over the site, over where the cross stood, the rock of Golgotha.
00:52:24.600
And then you can, you can walk up even today and there's an altar on top of the rock of Golgotha
00:52:31.720
that you can put your hand under, touch the rock, touch where the cross stood, then come down on the
00:52:36.520
other side. You walk across, you see the slab in the middle, and then the actual tomb of Christ is
00:52:42.840
still there. Then in the word sepulchre means tomb.
00:52:46.120
And this was the church that in 11 or 1006 AD, that the caliphate attacked, sacked the church itself,
00:52:56.920
and led into motion the events that would later be called the Crusades, when all the Christian soldiers,
00:53:07.080
the knights, and the kings came from Europe from all across Christendom to return to Jerusalem and
00:53:18.920
And as well, we did the Via de la Rosa on the way, and the Stations of the Cross.
00:53:24.600
That's right. So later on, you and I went and we did the entire Via de la Rosa. So the Via de la Rosa is
00:53:33.240
the way of suffering, Dolores. And on that, it is the 14 Stations of the Cross. One through 10 are
00:53:40.520
outside on the street, and then the last four, 11 to 14, are all within the Church of the Holy
00:53:46.680
Sepulchre itself. And so the last four Stations, of course, where Jesus is nailed, where Jesus is
00:53:53.960
crucified, Jesus is laid, and then where Jesus is entombed. And we did, I don't think I've done an
00:54:01.960
actual Stations of the Cross and said it all the way through since Confirmation.
00:54:18.280
That was, that was, that was the whole shebang.
00:54:20.920
I mean, mom was, mom was, mom was ballin', dad was crying.
00:54:25.320
Dad, when dad got in and saw the slab, he just started...
00:54:28.920
I couldn't even, I couldn't even look at dad. I was gonna lose it, but...
00:54:31.320
Yeah. Cause you could, cause dad, our dad is, he comes from that generation that you don't,
00:54:38.040
you don't let your feelings out. You don't let your feelings show, you never show weakness,
00:54:43.000
you never show hurt, just keep it all, you keep it in. You don't...
00:54:50.760
Like, to see him get down on the stone, no cushion.
00:54:56.120
He knelt down in front of the Slab of Christ, the 13th station, and was just, just bawling.
00:55:07.160
And I could tell that it had come over him at that point, that he knew where he was.
00:55:14.280
He knew exactly where he was, and the power of that church
00:55:22.760
And each of us as individuals just hit him directly. And the fact that we were able to be there,
00:55:29.640
and I, of course, had done it before with Tanya, but...
00:55:48.120
And if you think it is, then you're missing half the story.
00:55:54.280
In fact, you're missing the large part of the story.
00:55:56.760
And I would say this as a message to even folks out there who are agnostic or even atheists and
00:56:04.200
non-believer types that, look, you know, not everybody's going to be like Kevin and I,
00:56:12.680
kneeling and praying in Latin inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
00:56:16.440
Although you should be, but just understand that you can't really understand Western civilization,
00:56:25.960
Western society, our history, our institutions, our way of life, unless you understand all of this.
00:56:33.560
Because this has been a massive part of the creation of Western society and Western culture.
00:56:39.480
Whether you want to believe in the supernatural, metaphysical aspects of it or not,
00:56:46.680
that you have to at least acknowledge that this is a major, major part of what got us to where we are now.
00:56:59.240
There are traditions that are being passed on certainly from father, son.
00:57:03.480
And in this case, I was able to take my two children to all of those sites along with us.
00:57:10.520
Some cases, literally carrying them on my back if I had to.
00:57:14.440
Actually, many cases carrying them on our backs.
00:57:17.400
But the point being that that's something for the sake of the pilgrimage,
00:57:21.560
that's something that hopefully that one day they'll be able to do with their children.
00:57:27.240
When I'm older, and my knees are getting bad, and I'm complaining in a back seat, that they're taking their kids as well.
00:57:35.000
My final thought is, this is my second time in Israel, just come.
00:57:46.200
And you will always be able to say that every time that you turn a page in the Bible,
00:57:50.040
you'll realize, wait a minute. I remember exactly what that was like because I was there.
00:58:20.040
Ladies and gentlemen, as always, you have my permission for the issue.