Cairo: Jesus in Egypt & God's Unusual Leaning
God seldom gives us all we need to understand, but He always gives us what we need in order to obey. The story of Jesus in Egypt as a boy offers a...
Whenever I visit the ancient Cardo street in Jerusalem, I like to look at the replica of the Medeba Map mosaic. It depicts the Holy Land as it looked in AD 580 and shows Jerusalem sectioned by crossroads. The divisions paved the way for the 4 quarters of Jerusalem.
(Photo: The Medeba Map mosaic, showing the Cardo street at center. The Greek letters at top left read: “Holy City of Jerusalem.” Courtesy of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)
The annual celebration of Jerusalem Day, or Yom Yerushalayim, celebrates the reunification of Jerusalem. But can we really call the city unified? Although the capital of Israel enjoys a unification of Jewish control, there remains a wildly disjointed set of worldviews.
The 4 quarters of Jerusalem represent, in small manner, the ongoing contentions that have existed for centuries. But one day the 4 quarters of Jerusalem will be unified.
Here’s how.
In the second century, the Roman Emperor Hadrian determined to make Jerusalem a Roman city (actually, a non-Jewish city).
Archaeologists discovered the Cardo in the 1970s and the Decumanus in 2010 during the Jaffa Gate renovation. The location of these ancient crossroads still section off the four quarters of Jerusalem.
(Photo: The excavated Cardo street in Jerusalem with reconstructed columns. Courtesy of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)
(Quarters and gates of the Old City, from Wikipedia Commons)
In spite of these clear divisions, the 4 quarters of Jerusalem have ironic overlaps:
(Photo: A group singing in St. Anne’s Church in Jerusalem)
With all this diversity in the 4 quarters of Jerusalem, it becomes clear that there is a difference between the “reunification” of Jerusalem and the “restoration” the Bible predicts.
The Prophet Zechariah promises that even though “the nations” will attack the city, the Messiah will come and bring a restoration that includes complete reunification:
The LORD will be king over all the earth; in that day the LORD will be the only one, and His name the only one . . . and there will no longer be a curse, for Jerusalem will dwell in security. —Zechariah 14:1–11 (see also Luke 21:20-27)
Scattered across the skyline of the Old City protrude all manner of crosses, crescent moons, and Stars of David—like a tangle of wheat and tares.
No doubt, as Zechariah wrote, it will take a Messiah to sort it out.
Enjoy a more vibrant relationship with God and deepen your understanding of God's Word by experiencing the Holy Land from wherever you are.
Tell me what you think: What do you think peace in the Middle East will look like after the Messiah comes again? To leave a comment, just click here.
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