As I studied the Bible during my youth and on into adulthood before I visited Israel—the modern nation that encompasses the Holy Land, where Jesus lived and ministered—I too had questions about events described in the Old and New Testaments. I used maps of Palestine and Jerusalem to try to follow the storylines in the Bible and to try to discover where these sacred events unfolded. At an even more basic level, I wondered what remnants of ancient Israel could be seen in the modern nation of that same name.
That study eventually led me to write the book The Hope of the Promise: Israel in Ancient and Latter Days. I hope those that read this book will all get a better understanding, as I did through my studies, about things that led up to one of the transcendent events toward the end of the Savior’s ministry.
Six months before He was crucified, Jesus took His closest friends on a walking tour of the area now known as the Golan Heights and the foothills of Mount Hermon, the tallest peak in the Holy Land. Little could they have imagined what was in store at the summit of that mountain.
They started their hike up into the mountains just before Judaism’s fall festivals—Yom Kippur (the holiest holiday) and the Feast of Tabernacles (the most joyous holiday). These holidays, along with Passover in the spring and Pentecost in the early summer, were traditionally celebrated by all Jews at the temple in Jerusalem. It seems likely that Jesus would have been questioned by His close friends, the Apostles, about why they were heading north on their walk instead of going south toward Jerusalem and the temple, where they would join the rest of the house of Israel in celebrating the upcoming festivals.
Applying my study to that incident raised a number of questions in my mind. When Jesus went north instead of south on that occasion, what was He looking for? Why was Cesarea Phillippi the first stop on that trip? What was the Savior hoping to find there? And where did Jesus and His friends go after that?
The answers became a spiritually quenching experience for me that has been enhanced by my subsequent experience. Having now traveled many times to the modern state of Israel, I have seen for myself where Jesus and Jacob, Abraham and Elijah walked and worked. I can still see there the remnants of ancient Israel, from the water tunnel and wall built by Hezekiah to defend Jerusalem against the Assyrian army to the Roman streets and Jewish synagogues where Jesus walked and preached. I have stood in Cesarea Phillippi.
With the depth of that experience added to my diligent study, I began to perceive what Jesus might have had in mind as He stopped at Cesarea Phillippi, giving His Apostles the opportunity to ponder the pagan temple erected there to Pan. It was there that Jesus asked one of the most important questions of His ministry: “Whom say men that I, the Son of Man, am?”
The Apostles provided a variety of answers to the Savior’s probing question. Some people thought Jesus was Elias; others thought He was Jeremias; still others thought He was one of the ancient prophets. Some thought that He was John the Baptist. And there were those, probably many, who thought He was simply a wise rabbi. Some of the Pharisees even claimed that he was possessed by a devil. Clearly, the miracles Jesus had performed among the people had failed to give them a true understanding of His identity and His mission.
After hearing what the Apostles reported, Jesus then taught two of the most world-changing doctrines He would ever teach: the terrible truth of the coming Crucifixion and the consequent promise of Resurrection. And then He took His inner circle of friends, those who now had new understanding, to the Mount of Transfiguration, high among the peaks of Mount Hermon. None of them would ever be the same.
The events of that day, both at Cesarea Phillippi and on the Mount, lead me to remember a discovery that should change all of us with the same impact as those Apostles were changed on the Mount. In Genesis, the Bible contains the story of the origin of the name Israel, which means “one who prevails with God.” God renamed Jacob (a grandson of Abraham) Israel after Jacob believed himself “not worthy of the least of all [God’s] mercies” and brought his fears to Abraham’s God in prayer. That act resulted in the surprise message of the Bible: Unworthy men and women, like Jacob, like you and me, can bring their fears to God and prevail upon Him to help them.
As I read it, the Bible makes the promise that if I strive to have a relationship with the Almighty, I too can be included in the house of Israel, the family of God’s children who prevail upon Him to bless them. That promise was not limited to those who walked the dusty paths of the Holy Land two millennia ago. That promise still applies to us who are living in the modern world, and it’s a life-changer.
The Hope of the Promise is a book that shows how the Bible brings God’s promises to ancient Israel into the modern world, where hope is sorely missing and needed. Through its more than one hundred color photographs, the reader can experience a trip of a lifetime to the Holy Land, where God’s people, Israel, first learned to prevail upon Him to bless them despite their unworthiness—and where God’s people in our day can still take hope in.