Dr. Paul E. Bellino
A JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM
“Only one life, will soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last. “I had given this saying on a wooden plaque to my parents when I was first saved some 57 years ago. The words have remained in my heart and mind all these years. The plaque now hangs in my sister’s home. I have seen many friends and loved ones go the way of all flesh, and how true today is the saying on that plaque. And we are reminded of our Lord’s words in Mark 8:36, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul.”
I learned as a young convert over 50 years ago these words that stirred my heart then, as they do now
I walked today where Jesus walked,
In days of long ago.
I wandered down each path He knew,
With reverent step and slow.
Those little lanes, they have not changed,
A sweet peace fills the air.
I walked today where Jesus walked,
And felt Him close to me.
My pathway led through Bethlehem,
A memory ever sweet.
The little hills of Galilee,
That knew His childish feet.
The Mount of Olives, hallowed scenes,
That Jesus knew before
I saw the mighty Jordan row,
As in the days of yore.
I knelt today where Jesus knelt,
Where all alone he prayed.
The Garden of Gethsemane,
My heart felt unafraid.
I picked my heavy burden up,
And with Him at my side,
I climbed the Hill of Calvary,
I climbed the Hill of Calvary,
Where on the Cross He Died!
I walked today where Jesus walked,
And felt Him close to me.
May we walk close by His side today and always; and Lord help us to bring others along life’s way with us to You. AMEN! Ezekiel 43:1-3 tells us that, “Afterward he brought me to the gate, even the gate that looketh toward the east; and behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east. And His voice was like a noise of many waters; and the earth shined with His glory. And it was according to the appearance of the vision which I saw, even according to the vision that I saw when He came to destroy the city. And the vision was like the vision that I saw by the river Chebar; and I fell upon my face.”
When Jesus first came to the Mount of Olives He came in humility, but when He returns for His own He will come in power, and majesty and great glory. On the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, the high priest would view the Temple site through three open doors from the Mount of Olives. There he would sacrifice the Red Heifer once a year. From that angle, the high priest would know the exact time to sacrifice the Red Heifer. Then the scapegoat would have the people’s sins placed upon its head and be carried south to the Wilderness of Judea toward the Dead Sea. From one of the high cliffs, the scapegoat would be thrown to his death. Christ was our scapegoat and Red Heifer, sacrificed outside the gates of the Holy City.
Judas Iscariot betrayed our Lord with a kiss. The Garden of Gethsemane is across the Kidron Valley on the east side of the walls of Jerusalem, near the Eastern Gate. Jesus was taken prisoner in this garden and brought to the palace of the high priest. Jesus had to be lowered down into a dark, damp chamber, (in March or April, 29 A.D.) alone; for what was to be only a small part of His intense suffering. Today the Church of St. Peter of Alicante (the cock crows) is located at this site. Here are the 39 steps Jesus had walked from the palace on that fateful night 2,000 years ago. That dungeon ultimately led to Calvary. There is as it has been called “a green hill far away,” on the range of Mount Moriah, called Mount Calvary, the “Place of the Skull; Golgotha”, in the native tongue. It is also known as Gordon’s Calvary (named after British General “Chinese” Gordon who discovered this site in the late 18th century). At Gordon’s Calvary, you can see the hollowed stone eye sockets, and the stone bridge of a nose: the “Place of the Skull.” There is reasonable cause to believe that these are the actual sites of the crucifixion and of the burial of the Lord Jesus.
The gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out, for the first time, on the Gentiles (Acts 10:44-48). This experience helped Peter and the early church to see that believers, both Jews and Gentiles, are one in Christ Jesus. Paul the Apostle, as recorded in Acts 26, defended himself before Herod Agrippa, Bernice and Festus — and proclaimed the witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul the Apostle had shared the Water of Life with all those that heard him that day long ago. Jesus was crucified outside the Gates of Jerusalem for our sins. Whereas, the blood of bulls and goats would not suffice for our sins, He made full, complete, and final atonement for our sins at Calvary.
We trust, by His grace, that the death our Heavenly Father sees in us is that of our identity with the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 6:1-11); and of our resurrection to newness of life in Christ Jesus (Galatians 2:20; and II Corinthians 5:17). We have to die unto ourselves or we will only live for ourselves and ultimately die without the Lord. In that state, we are of no use to God, His people, the world or even ourselves.
In MacBeth, Shakespeare says,
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!”
MacBeth was a greedy man, a murderer, captive to a wasted life, without ultimate purpose and meaning. By contrast, as Christians, we should be challenged by the Word of God through the Spirit of Christ, to be in the world, but not of it. In America, we generally think that 100 or 200 years is a long time, but the Holy Land testifies that “a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day.” We live in a lost and dying world where men without Christ often testify to the words of the Rubaiyat translated by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859. They are the words of the old Persian astronomer poet of the 11th Century, Omar Khayyám:
“‘Tis all a Checker-board of Nights and days where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates and slays, and one by one back in the Closet lays.”
The theology of nature, and the mere religious writings of men, often leave man with a god who is way out there, unmindful of the trouble in which man finds himself. It requires the Biblical message of a personal Savior, through a chosen vessel, fit for the Master’s use, to relate the living word to a dying soul. If not, one might continue to ponder the words of Omar Khayyám:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
But, PRAISE BE TO GOD, we are not left without the Word of Truth. For Jesus said in John 17:17, “Thy word is truth.” In Romans 1:16 the Apostle Paul said, with burning zeal and assurance, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes...” both Jew and Gentile! We are at the end of the Gentile Age, the Fig Tree is blossoming, Israel is a nation again after almost 2,000 years of being trampled under foot of the Gentiles. “The desert is blossoming as the rose.” PRAISE HIS HOLY NAME!
Israel is the “apple of His eye” and the Lord has been mighty to deliver her from her enemies. PRAY FOR THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM (Psalm122:6). Over the years the Lord has enabled us to meet and fellowship with our compatriots the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Dahlonega, Georgia and the Metro Atlanta area. It is an important ministry with which Atlanta's Church of All Nations finds itself involved; ACAN is one of the last conservative Reformed churches in the area dating back to the days of the old Southern Presbyterian Church of men like General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and the great Reformed theologian of the Confederacy, Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney.
By God's grace may we continue the Lord’s work in this hour while it is yet day; for “the night cometh, when no man can work” (John 9:4). Chaplain Paul E. Bellino, D.Min.,Chaplains of the Confederacy, and Sons of Confederate Veterans Chaplain Camp 1860 of the Blue Ridge Rifles, Dahlonega, Georgia