Mount Sinai to Mars Hill
This blog is coming to you from Athens, Greece. Let me bring you up to date.
On Wednesday Peri and I crossed the border from Israel to Egypt to make our journey to Mount Sinai. We had three Egyptians accompanying us on our journey. A Bedouin driver by the name of Akhmed; a security guard by the name of Mohammad; a guide by the name of Mena, who, much to our surprise, is a passionate believer in Jesus! This gave us a further sense that God was leading us on this spiritual journey. Mena is 24 and was converted a few years ago through some supernatural experiences. Peri is writing an extensive account of our experiences in Sinai and when she completes it, I’ll post it here.
Here’s a picture Peri took of me and my Sinai Gang.
Left to Right: Akhmed, BZ, Mohammed (with his German sub-machine gun under his jacket), Mena
We chose to journey to Mount Sinai, not by the easy way along the paved road from the Red Sea to St. Catherine’s Monastery, but directly across the desert through the Sinai wilderness in a Toyota Land Cruiser. I’m glad we went this way, but it was rough, rough, rough! We were forever from nowhere. Lunch was in a Bedouin tent. I’ll let Peri tell these stories.
After a couple of hours of sleep we were up at 1:30 AM to begin the hike to the 7,500 summit of Mount Sinai.
Ready to begin at 2:30 AM
I’m more excited than I look.
The hike up Sinai was harder than I expected. (And Moses did it at age 80!)
At 4:45 we were on top of Sinai. It was 37 degrees. I found a rocky perch next to the ancient monastery to sit, meditate and wait for sunrise. It was November 9 — 32 years to the day after I was saved. What a long strange trip it’s been from Savannah, Missouri to Mount Sinai!
Sunrise came right at 6:00.
The view from Sinai.
Notice you can see the trail we hiked to reach the top of Sinai.
I didn’t climb Mt. Sinai as a tourist or on a lark. I had an appointment to meet with God on Sinai. God had given me this word:
“Come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself to Me there on top of the mountain.” -Exodus 34:2
What I prayed and what I felt the Lord say when I was with Him on Mount Sinai, I’ll save to share at a later date (Probably Friday night, November 24).
I’ll say this much: It was a significant time.
After we came down from the mountain we had a few hours at St. Catherine’s Monastery — which has a church that has been holding services five times a day for 1,479 years! Then it was another all day drive back through the Sinai, a walk across the border from Egypt back into Israel and an evening flight from Eilat to Tel Aviv. Then we were up a 2:30 AM this morning for our flight to Athens (life can be cruel sometimes!).
Upon checking into our hotel, I told Peri I wanted to walk to the Areopagus (Mars Hill) where Paul preached to the Athenians in A.D. 53. We asked the clerk at the front desk for direction, but he’d never heard of it. So we struck out on our own…and walked straight to it as though we knew exactly where we were going. I think God helped us do that. Another sign. And the significance of standing on Mount Sinai one day and on Mars Hill the next day did not escape me.
On Mars Hills.
Read about what happened here in Acts 17:16-34. Notice the Acropolis in the background.
As I was flying from Tel Aviv to Athens this morning, I was thinking about the significance of the Sinai and Greece in God’s purposes. This is what I wrote:
Written language (not hieroglyphic symbols, but letters forming an alphabet) first emerged in the Sinai around 1,500 B.C. This is exactly the time and place where Moses received and wrote the Law of God for the nation of Israel. The first alphabet is Hebrew. It is not inconceivable that the first substantive documents to be written with an alphabet were the books of Moses. But written Hebrew contains only consonants and no vowels. Because of this there is always a bit of mystery and guess work going on. Hebrew unfolds the mystery, but doesn’t explain all the mystery.
The first language to incorporate vowels in a written language is Greek. Greek made language precise and eliminated the guess work. If Hebrew is the language where mystery begins to unfold, Greek is the language where mystery is revealed.
Thus the Old Testament was written in the first language to use an alphabet; a written language where the truth of God is contained in a mystery. But the New Testament was written in the first language to be absolutely precise for the reader by utilizing an alphabet containing vowels; a language where mystery can be revealed.
In my mind there is no doubt that God was at work in the formation of these things. The formation of the Hebrew alphabet for containing the mystery of God and the formation of the Greek alphabet for revealing the mystery of God.
Then, if you like, you can explore the implications of the Romans perfecting road building at just the time that the New Testament was being completed. This too, I believe, is in the Providence of God, so that the mysteries contained and revealed in the complete Bible — the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament — could rapidly spread throughout the known world. The hand of God was in the creation of the Roman roads as well as the Hebrew and Greek languages. God is in the communication business.
Oh, by the way, you’re reading this on the internet.
From Athens,
BZ
PS
Peri has completed her account of the first part of our trip into the Sinai.
Read about it here.