Thursday March 7, 2019
Mt. Carmel
After a short bus ride east and inland from Caesarea by the Sea l, we came to Mt. Carmel.
Mt. Carmel is where the prophet Elijah duked it out with Jezebel’s Baal prophets. “So Ahab summoned all the people of Israel and the prophets to Mount Carmel. Then Elijah stood in front of them and said, ‘How much longer will you waver, hobbling between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him! But if Baal is God, then follow him!’ But the people were completely silent.” 1King18:20-21 NLT Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a duel to see whether the God of Israel or the demon god Baal would send fire down from heaven to set fire to the wood upon which an animal sacrifice would be made. As it turned out the prophets of Baal beseeched their god all day and nothing happened. Then it was Elijah’s turn and he had the wood of his altar drenched with water several times. He then prayed to the Lord to “prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant.” And “Immediately the fire of the LORD flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust. It even licked up all the water in the trench!” 1King18:36,38 NLT
Valley of Armageddon
We then climbed to the top of Mt. Carmel, we could see the valley of Armageddon where the Final Battle is prophesied to be fought. “And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty… And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.” Revelation 16:13,14,16
Later we left Mt. Carmel and went to the top of Megiddo above the Jezreel Valley of Armageddon and climbed down into a shaft to a tunnel built to reach a spring that was the water source for the people of Megiddo. It is believed that one of the Kings of the northern Kingdom of Israel, possibly King Ahab, dug the shaft down over 100 feet through the layers of past civilizations. This vertical shaft led to the horizontal tunnel that went underneath Tel Megiddo to the spring.
This system allowed the residents of Megiddo to keep their water source a secret from enemies, but they had the arduous task of trekking down the long shaft and navigating the long tunnel to reach the spring and then carrying the water back up, all in the dark. Our guide Avi Levi told us that the tunnel is an engineering marvel. The ancient Israeli builders started at opposite ends and miraculously met exactly in the middle perfectly aligned. Armageddon ‘hill of Megiddo” or Tel Megiddo is not a natural mountain but a Tel. A Tel is an archeological mound made up of one civilization building upon the former. And it is estimated that Tel Megiddo has 26 layers of settlements dating back 9000 years.
The following journal articles are of my research for various design and painting projects planned. The intial posts are of Israel and Eygpt.