Msg #2244 The Half Shekel Journal IV by Ed Rice

Vol IV Day 3 30 Jan 2009 Nazareth – Tel-Dan: As we got off the bus in Nazareth the tension in this land crackled and creaked. Three Muslim women sat beneath a huge banner which announced something about Allah, Mohammad and a desired Mosque at the entry way of this Catholic church. The one with the infant jested toward our group and said something in Arabic to the others and all three laughed and giggled and babbled on. As 24 Christians, 12 Baptist Preachers, of the Gospel walked by in silence, their chiding laughter was replaced by booing as we walked by to another 'man made' religious establishment, the Roman Catholic “Church of the Annunciation.” Both establishments, Catholicism and Islam, have a history of hatred towards God's chosen. The paganism of Catholicism both amazed and appalled me. Here in the Holy Land the spokesman of Christianity is perceived to be this pagan Harlot, the Roman Catholic Church and her back up speaker the Greek Orthodox Church is competing for property rights on what they perceive to be holy dirt. As we enter the magnificent dome structure their paganism again caused me to marvel. “And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.” (Rev 17:7)

The real marvel of Nazareth was found in the archaeological dig underneath and accessed from the outer courtyard of the church. There, 20 feet below the surface of the beautiful poinsettia garden was a small portion of the village of Nazareth. With an estimated population in the hundreds, it should not have been surprising that it was then said of this little place, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46) This tiny excavation under the Church showed Nazareth to be a small poor village of masons and stone workers. The modernists want to immediately change the Bible; in their opinion, since no Black and Decker circular saw was found in the excavation Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3 were errant in referencing a carpenter's son and should have shown him as the mason's son instead. One of the preachers with us (not a Baptist), because he had a year of seminary Greek, even tried to justify their hasty changing of the Holy Scripture! Modernists do not believe in God's preservation of His inerrant, infallible, verbally inspired Scripture, and consider it their duty in life to try to change and 'fix' His Holy Bible. They expect to restore some fictitious 'original manuscript' that God lost 1,500 years ago when they suppose 'Church Fathers' added stuff to the originals. The more sincerity they have in doing God this 'favor' the more their brazen ignorance ¹ aggravates this Baptist preacher. The excavation of the tiny town of Nazareth is a work in progress, the Word of God is not!

An Essay for week #44 - Oct 30, 2022 While Rices are back in Israel

View the whole journal www.GSBaptistChurch.com/israel

1Not their ignorance of linguistics as much as their brazen ignorance of God's almighty power to preserve his inspired words through the last 2000 years of dauntless attack.

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