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Route 60- The Road to Jerusalem (Part 1) - The Biblical Highway
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00:11It can be said that for everything we wish to learn or want to become, there is a road to
00:17follow.
00:21From the beginning, the road to believing in only one true God, the maker of heaven and earth,
00:26has carved its roots through the ancient land of Israel.
00:32It is a road that Abraham, the father of nations, walked as the first believer in monotheism.
00:40It was along this road that God made his covenant with Abraham,
00:44promising that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.
00:52It is a road walk by Jesus, the central figure of Christianity.
01:00This road is deeply symbolic in the story of God shared by Jews and Christians.
01:06And it is a literal highway that bisects modern Israel, where it is now known simply as Route 60.
01:19Route 60 follows the ancient path from Nazareth to Beersheba.
01:24It connects many holy sites and biblical events in what could be called the original Bible Belt.
01:32It has mile markers, human and divine, to memorialize the acts of celebration, suffering and salvation
01:40that are woven into Israel's history.
01:45I'm David Friedman, and I invite you to join me and my co-host and fellow traveler, Mike Pompeo,
01:52as we explore the ancient mysteries of Route 60, the biblical highway.
02:08David Friedman is an Orthodox Jew born in North Woodmere, New York.
02:12David's father was a rabbi of a conservative congregation.
02:16David served as the U.S. ambassador to Israel,
02:19overseeing the long-promised move at the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
02:24He helped negotiate the historic Abraham Accords,
02:27which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and four Arab nations
02:31for the first time in nearly three decades.
02:35Mike Pompeo is an evangelical Christian who was born in Orange, California.
02:40The grandson of Italian immigrants, he graduated first in his class from West Point.
02:45He was elected the U.S. House Representative for the Kansas 4th District
02:50and served three terms before being appointed as Director of the CIA
02:56and then as U.S. Secretary of State.
03:10Our first stop is northern Israel,
03:13where Route 60 begins its winding descent to Jerusalem.
03:20Nazareth is an ancient city not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible,
03:24but it plays an intriguing role as the New Testament opens.
03:37Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth.
03:45To a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David.
03:51The virgin's name was Mary.
03:55Then the angel said to her,
03:57Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
04:02And behold, you will conceive and your woman bring forth a son
04:08and shall call his name Jesus.
04:12Luke 1, verse 26 and 29.
04:17We know him as Jesus of Nazareth, right?
04:19This is where he began much of his work, much of his life.
04:23It's where he began his pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
04:26We're sitting not far from Galilee, right,
04:29where he performed his first miracle at Cana.
04:31When I was a cadet at West Point,
04:33two kids a year older than me invited me to Bible study.
04:37And over the course of that first summer as a cadet,
04:39they brought me to Jesus Christ as my Savior.
04:41We would have read from the Old Testament.
04:43We would have read from the New Testament.
04:45And it changed my life forever.
04:46And so this place, to be here in Nazareth,
04:48where Jesus began his pilgrimage,
04:49which reminds me of the start of my faith life as well.
05:14It's about 100 miles straight down Route 60 to Jerusalem.
05:17And just look at, you know, the terrain.
05:22In those days, you know, it was all this.
05:24Rocks and brush.
05:25It's all rocks and brush.
05:27And 100 miles of rocks and brush to get from here
05:29to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the temple period.
05:37From the high vantage point of Nazareth,
05:39two mountains of great biblical significance may be seen.
05:43Mount Carmel to the west and Mount Gilboa to the south.
05:48Right behind me is Mount Carmel.
05:50And it's one of the seminal moments of the development of the Jewish nation
05:54when there was a challenge to Mount atheism.
05:57There was a challenge to God.
05:59There were people who, you know, worshipped the God known as Baal.
06:04And Elijah went up on top of the mountain and he gave a challenge.
06:08He said, all you guys who want to worship Baal, you come here.
06:11And those that want to worship God, come here.
06:13And God showed his power in favor of Elijah.
06:16And the people who worshiped Baal realized that they were kind of wasting their time.
06:20At the end of the ceremony, the Jewish people got up and said,
06:23you know, God is the Lord.
06:24They repeated it over and over again.
06:26And we still say that now.
06:28Every Yom Kippur at the end of the ceremony, after fasting a whole day,
06:31we give the same affirmation of God.
06:35Just a short distance from here is Mount Gilboa,
06:39where King Saul had his final battle,
06:43where he fell on his sword.
06:46King Saul, a tragic figure.
06:48He was the first king of Israel and he was going to lead the Jewish people.
06:53Regrettably, he was a failure.
06:55And the kingship was taken from him by Samuel.
06:57And this is where he perished, along with his son, Jonathan.
07:08We just celebrated Israel's Independence Day.
07:12We set a record, right?
07:14The record is the longest that the Jewish people have ruled over all this land
07:18from a capital in Jerusalem.
07:20The second longest period was King David and King Solomon.
07:24King David ruled in Jerusalem for 33 years and King Solomon for 40 years, 73 years.
07:30So we just set the record.
07:35These peaks are in Samaria, long ago and now again, part of Israel.
07:41Samaria was home to most of what we refer to as the Ten Lost Tribes.
07:47Those tribes split from the United Kingdom ruled by Solomon around 3,000 years ago.
07:53Two centuries later, those tribes were conquered by Assyria, dispersed around the world, and lost forever.
08:02Samaria has enormous biblical importance and was restored under Israeli control in the Six-Day War of 1967.
08:14Welcome to Mount Yabal.
08:16We're actually kind of on the back side of the mountain, on a lower step.
08:19When Adam Zertal excavated in the 1980s, he found this large rectangular structure and then underneath it a smaller round
08:27structure.
08:27The round one underneath is actually the one that Joshua himself constructed.
08:31At some point later, they built the rectangular structure over top and continued using it as an altar.
08:41More than an archaeological site, the altar is a sacred space that inspires remembrance and reflection.
09:01You know, Mike, I've been all over Israel so many times, even before I started working for the government, and
09:07I've never been here.
09:08And I am so excited to be here.
09:12Yeah.
09:13So the Bible says that when Joshua built this, God did not want stones that were yun, that were chopped
09:23up, because metal is an instrument of war, and he wanted altars to be instruments of peace.
09:33My bar mitzvah was in 1971, and it was at the Western Wall.
09:38When you're a bar mitzvah boy, especially in the observant world, you read one of the sections of the Torah.
09:43There's 54 of them.
09:45So the one that I read begins, Behold, re'e si.
09:50And God says, Behold, I have set before you today the blessing and the curse.
09:56And I've placed the blessing on Mount Grisim, and I've placed the curse on Har Ebal.
10:03So, of all the verses in the Torah, this is the one that I'm the most familiar with, because I've
10:07practiced it for a year before my bar mitzvah.
10:10Joshua comes across the Jordan River with the people of Israel.
10:14He now is leading the Jewish nation, taking over for the greatest leader in history, the one who spoke to
10:21God face to face.
10:23There were other battles to be fought.
10:26You know, the Philistines are there, and there are plenty of other nations that had to be conquered to conquer
10:30the entirety of Israel.
10:31But he stopped fighting, and he went back here, and he built an altar, and he prayed to God, and
10:35he wrote his own set of Ten Commandments.
10:38You're staring at an altar of Joshua, who began like you at West Point, right?
10:46Right, as a fighter.
10:47As a fighter?
10:47As a someone who graduated from West Point and then had this incredible privilege to serve the United States as
10:52its most senior diplomat,
10:53I literally got up every morning reminding myself of the task.
10:57The task of putting our nation in the right place so that we could create peace and prosperity with an
11:04understanding of something that's bigger.
11:05It's God, right?
11:06Joshua came to see that, right?
11:08He reconnected the Jewish people with God in this place.
11:14Down here are some of the stones.
11:17So, like, here's the center.
11:19I'm standing in the center of the round archer.
11:21They built the rectangular one, like, smack dab over top.
11:24And so I'll put it further down.
11:26Half a meter, three quarters of a meter.
11:30I think the scene here, you have to imagine, is unbelievable.
11:32Apart from this altar, you have six tribes of Israel standing on this mountain.
11:37Six tribes standing behind me on Mount Grisim.
11:41The priests are in the middle, and they're announcing the blessing.
11:44So what would be a blessing?
11:45A blessing would be, blessed be who follows the word of God, okay?
11:49And everybody in that mountain over there would yell, amen, all right?
11:53And then there would be a curse.
11:54You know, cursed be he who moves the boundaries of his neighbor's land.
11:58And everybody on this mountain would say, amen.
12:01And it's the whole nation of Israel with the priests in the middle.
12:06The five books of Moses, only the first one, Genesis, talks about, you know, our forefathers in Israel.
12:12Then we were either in Egypt or we were in the wilderness.
12:15And now in the book of Joshua, we're back.
12:17We're back.
12:17Out of Egypt.
12:18This is the first Aliyah.
12:20The first Aliyah, the Jewish people back from Egypt, and they come here, and they reconnect with God right here.
12:26This is the place.
12:27And to me, the most significant thing is just Joshua recognizing that he's not just a general.
12:35You know, he takes over from Moses.
12:38Imagine taking over from Moses.
12:39This is tough.
12:40This is impossible, right?
12:42Joshua has this incredible privilege, and he comes here, and he wants to just, he wants to keep everybody safe,
12:46and he wants to fight.
12:47And then he takes a step back and says, you know what?
12:49This is really all about connecting with God.
12:51I mean, we're here to build a Jewish nation at the direction of God, with the blessings of God, and
12:56I have to pray to God.
12:58And I got to build an altar to pray to God.
13:00I got to do it the way I was commanded.
13:01I got to build it with the right rocks, and I got to put it in the right place.
13:04Yeah, and we're not touching them.
13:05And now we're touching them.
13:13Right in front of us, over that hill, is the town of Shreem.
13:18It's a hard word to pronounce.
13:19Some people anglicize it as Shechem.
13:22I'll go with Shechem.
13:23You go with Shechem.
13:24I'll do Shreem.
13:25People will know what we're talking about.
13:30It is the place where the entire cycle of the Jewish nation being created, going into exile, and then returning,
13:37is all in this city.
13:39And Abraham initially lived that way in a place called Ur-Kasdim, which is something along the lines of Babylonia.
13:47But then his family took him to a place called Haran.
13:50It's somewhere on the border of Iraq and Syria.
13:53And that's where they lived.
13:54And God told him, you know, leave everything.
13:57Leave your family and come here.
13:58And Abraham obeyed God's will.
14:00And he traveled a fairly long distance.
14:02He settles first in Shreem.
14:05Then he traveled south and much along the road that we're filming.
14:09And then the Jewish people are exiled to Egypt.
14:12And Joseph, the son of Jacob, becomes the vizier of Egypt.
14:16Very successful there.
14:18Jewish people thrive there.
14:19Then there's a new pharaoh and they're enslaved.
14:21For a couple hundred years, God forged them into a nation, into a cohesive nation.
14:28Or as cohesive as Jews could get.
14:33And then he brought them back.
14:39And Joseph, he died before the Jews were put in slavery.
14:43But he knew.
14:44He had a vision.
14:45And he said to his brothers then, when you come back, when God brings you back to this land, I
14:50want my bones reinterred.
14:54And they were brought back and buried in the city of Shreem.
14:57So it's a complete cycle.
14:58Abraham starts here and then Joseph's bones come back here.
15:01And it's the entire saga, the Old Testament saga of the Jewish people.
15:07The grave of Joseph is a very holy place.
15:18Also, Jacob's well.
15:19I taught fifth grade Sunday school.
15:21This is a story that we taught to fifth graders at Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas.
15:26Jesus spoke with this woman who was clearly a Samaritan.
15:29These were disfavored people.
15:33Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as well as
15:39his sons and his livestock?
15:43Jesus answered and said to her,
15:45Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again.
15:49But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.
15:54But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water, springing up into everlasting
15:59life.
16:03John 4, verse 12 through 14.
16:27John 4, verse 12 through 14.
16:35When I was the director of the CIA, it was actually the first time in government service I had been
16:40into Judea and Samaria.
16:46The security situation required at the United States support.
16:51I would meet with the Palestinian security forces and with the Israeli people.
16:55And I remember one day we were Israeli security leaders, Palestinian security leaders, and then our team.
17:02All aimed at the same thing.
17:04We were trying to build this better place.
17:06What we were doing against a backdrop of an American policy that failed to acknowledge the reality on the ground.
17:15And the Palestinian security leaders knew that the Israeli security leaders knew that, and so did my team.
17:24I didn't dream that someday the president would call me into his office and say, bye-bye.
17:29But Mike, I think I'm going to make a change.
17:32You want to be a secretary of state?
17:35When I heard the news of Mike's promotion, I was elated.
17:38But even I could not have imagined then that this would lead to the Pompeo Doctrine,
17:42Mike's courageous decision to reverse 40 years of State Department policy
17:46and to declare that Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, biblical Israel, was not contrary to international law.
18:06We were privileged to visit Shiloh on the festival of Lach B'Omer,
18:10the day, according to Jewish tradition, that a devastating plague came to an end.
18:15Shiloh was as alive and festive that day as it must have been during festivals in biblical times.
18:35Straight down to Route 60, we are in another holy place, Shiloh.
18:39And of course, there's so many Shiloh cities in America.
18:42So many states.
18:43So many states.
18:44And it's known for housing the tabernacle for 369 years.
18:51It doesn't appear at all in the first five books of Moses and that it appears in the book of
18:55Joshua.
18:56This is where the Jews finally stopped wandering.
18:59You know, God gave them a tabernacle, but it was portable.
19:02And they would take it from place to place to place.
19:04You know, the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy catalogued the places.
19:10They would take one after another after another, all the different places.
19:13They'd have to pick up the tabernacle and they'd have to carry the ark.
19:19As Joshua comes here, right, he moves the tabernacle here.
19:23What does he do next?
19:24He apportions the land of Israel to the 12 tribes.
19:28There was a lottery system, I guess, so people could feel they got a fair shake.
19:31You know, and they pulled out their places and the tribes from here, but head off in different directions.
19:36If you look at a map of ancient Israel, this is the midpoint right here.
19:41It's here.
19:42And then in all directions, the tribes are being allocated their territory from this going outward.
19:49You know, when you think of the rebirth of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, you know, a
19:54lot of people made Aliyah, but this was the first Aliyah.
19:57Yes.
19:58This was the first Aliyah.
19:59They come out of Egypt.
20:00They go up the Jordan River on the eastern side of the Jordan.
20:03Joshua takes them back at Qasr al-Yehud.
20:06He brings them to Gilgal, where they put up the thing for seven years.
20:09Then it's here for 369 years.
20:11And this is where Jews finally, finally found some permanence.
20:15They stopped wandering and they began to build their nation.
20:18It's the center of spiritual life and was also the center of life.
20:23And this is where the Jewish people would come on pilgrimages during the holidays, where they'd see each other, where
20:27families would be reunited.
20:30By and large, the Israelite nation, at this point in history, which is about 1200-1300 B.C., it's a
20:38sacrificial society.
20:39They make sacrifices to God.
20:45They made sacrifices over here, where the tabernacle stood.
20:48This is where the altar was.
20:49There's many sacrifices that are supposed to be eaten.
20:52Parts of it are supposed to be eaten by the family after they make the sacrifice.
20:55But there's a law that you can't eat a sacrifice far from the tabernacle, far from the temple.
21:03But there was an exception that you could eat it as long as you could see the tabernacle from where
21:08you were.
21:08So all around this area, we're at a low point here.
21:11Yeah, we're sitting in a little bit of a valley.
21:12And everywhere here, there are mountains.
21:14And when archaeologists went to look to the mountains, they saw that they were almost like bleachers.
21:20You know, there were these agricultural steps that were created so people could sit and eat their sacrifice within eyesight
21:26of the temple.
21:27Now, how do they know that?
21:29Under Jewish law, once you have a vessel used to carry a sacrifice, it can't be used for any other
21:34purpose.
21:35So they had no choice but to break it.
21:36And all around this area are broken shards of pottery.
21:41This is ancient Israel right here.
21:43And it was all so that people could have the maximum ability to see the tabernacle.
21:48It's the capital of the Jewish tradition until Jerusalem becomes places where God was for the Jewish people.
21:57Me, I think of the story of Hannah.
21:59My wife was in a Hannah circle at church at Eastminster Presbyterian.
22:03Hannah, a lot of Hannah circles, these are women who are deeply prayerful, who love their Lord.
22:09Hannah loved her Lord and wanted a baby.
22:12And Hannah prayed and prayed and prayed.
22:14And God miraculously provided her with a child.
22:18This child was Samuel.
22:20Samuel, of course, becomes a great leader.
22:23And Hannah's prayer, many think it was the beginning of prayer.
22:28It was a beautiful liturgical prayer.
22:32And she sat there by herself in the tabernacle.
22:37The priest's name was Ailee, which actually is the name of another town not far from here.
22:42And Ailee looked at her praying.
22:44And he'd never seen anybody move their lips like that in supplication before.
22:50You know, most of the time you're moving your lips, you're saying something or you're speaking loudly.
22:53Here is somebody whispering fervently to herself.
22:58What does Ailee say to Hannah?
23:00He said, you got to stop drinking.
23:02Stop drinking.
23:03You know, get rid of the wine.
23:05And she said to him, I'm not drunk.
23:07This is my, I'm letting my heart speak to God.
23:11And that's really where many people think that's where prayer began.
23:17She promised that she would dedicate her son to the tabernacle.
23:21And God resided in this tabernacle for 369 years.
23:25So prayer became, at this point, in this place, a prayer began to be part of the observance of the
23:33Jewish God.
23:38And Hannah prayed and said, my heart rejoices in the Lord.
23:43My horn is exalted in the Lord.
23:47I smile at my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation.
23:53No one is holy like the Lord, for there is none besides you, nor is there any rock like our
24:00God.
24:03First Samuel 2, verse 1 and 2.
24:09Samuel, as a teenager, I believe, heard a voice.
24:15And his first instinct was to think it was the voice of the priest.
24:18And he goes to the priest and said, yes.
24:20And he'd say, I wasn't talking to you.
24:22And he heard it again.
24:23And he continued to remain convinced that it was coming from another person.
24:27So he arose and went to Eli and said, here I am for you to call me.
24:33Then Eli perceived that the Lord had called the boy.
24:37Therefore Eli said to Samuel, go lie down, and it shall be if he calls you that you must say,
24:44speak, Lord, for your servant hears.
24:47So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
24:51Now the Lord came and stood and called at other times, Samuel, Samuel.
24:58And Samuel answered, speak, for your servant hears.
25:15In the aftermath of Joshua, until Samuel, in that gap period, called the period of the judges, we were adrift.
25:24I mean, we're completely adrift as a nation.
25:26Every 40, 50 years, a new judge would come.
25:29They would kind of straighten people out.
25:30But then there was this addiction in ancient Israel to idol worship.
25:34And that was something that, you know, predated the Jewish nation for a long time.
25:39We don't think now, you know, anybody having a real desire to create a, you know, an animal and to
25:44worship it.
25:45But it was very powerful then.
25:47And Samuel really broke it.
25:48He really broke it.
25:49Because he began to spiritualize God in a way that hadn't been done before.
25:54People began to see God in spiritual terms, not simply as a, you know, if I pray for this, you'll
26:02give me that.
26:03You know, it wasn't a transactional God.
26:05It was a spiritual God.
26:06Help me find meaning.
26:07Help me find life.
26:08Help me raise my children.
26:09And it began here.
26:15King David says that there were three people that really spoke to God conversationally.
26:22Moses, Aaron, and Samuel.
26:25It was very few times where there was an actual conversation between God and anyone else.
26:31But in terms of voice, I don't know that it happened any other time other than when Moses was at
26:36the burning bush.
26:37You hear the voice of God sometimes.
26:40And you want to deny it because it's so powerful and no one really knows what to do in having
26:46a conversation with God.
26:47I don't think you or I have had those types of voices in our lives.
26:53But, you know, given what you did for a living and what I did for a living over the last
26:57five years, I felt God's presence, if not his voice, often.
27:02I felt like he was with me always.
27:04I knew that the task that I had been given by the President of the United States was way bigger
27:08than me, that I'd go work and do my part.
27:11But I always knew that it was prayer and the Lord's guidance to give me the tenacity, the courage, the
27:17strength.
27:17One of the first times we met, I don't know if you remember, but I walked into your office and
27:22I said, Mike, you're killing me.
27:24And you said, well, what am I killing you for?
27:26I said, well, you know.
27:28I do remember this.
27:29I said, well, you know, there was, you know, your predecessor didn't like me and I didn't like him.
27:34And so I just went behind his back, you know, repeatedly, went straight to Trump and, you know, we would
27:38agree on something and we would make policy.
27:41You deserve the respect that I ought to go through you.
27:44The problem is you're busy.
27:45You got North Korea, you got Iran, you got, you know, you got a lot going on.
27:49You got China going on.
27:51So, you know, it's not like you're sitting around all day long with nothing else to do.
27:55But you were kind enough to say, tell me what you want to do.
27:58Let's have some phone calls.
28:00Let's put some things in writing.
28:02Let's do the work and get to the right place.
28:06As Joshua brought the Israelite nation across the Jordan River, the Ark came with him and spent seven years somewhere
28:12else in a place called Gilgal.
28:14And then it came here for 369 years.
28:18For those 369 years, this was the Jerusalem of the Israelite nation.
28:32You know, there's a great winery here called Shiloh Winery.
28:35It's not far from here where, you know, we were at Sagot a few times.
28:41There's wineries dotted up throughout all of today in Samaria.
28:51Until about three or four months before we left office, they had a label of their products, Made in West
28:57Bank.
28:57So they would put Made in West Bank on their bottles and they'd ship them off to America.
29:01And they lose two-thirds of their customers because of this, you know, this very unfortunate narrative that somehow they're
29:09supporting, you know, malign behavior by buying it.
29:13So we got rid of that, right?
29:15And now all the wine, all the other products, the delicious produce, the olives that grow here, the olive oil
29:25that's made here, they all say made in Israel.
29:31Benefited everyone who lives here.
29:33All the people who work in these places.
29:37Palestinians, Arabs, everyone.
29:59I don't know if you caught this, but Vice President Harris made a Passover Seder.
30:06Right on the table was a picture of Sagot wine.
30:11And she gets flack from the left.
30:15Why in the world would you advertise, you know, wine made in occupied territory?
30:21They don't know what to do.
30:22And they're looking to fire somebody.
30:27And they're trying to come up with a statement.
30:29And at the end, the statement she came out with was, it's the Trump administration's fault because they took the
30:35labeling off the bottle.
30:36And it no longer says Made in the West Bank.
30:38So I had no idea of knowing.
30:39So it's not my fault.
30:59We're in the town of Bethel, Bethel, passing by the rock where Jacob dreamt.
31:11He dreamt of a ladder ascending to the heavens with angels going up and down.
31:16And this is one of the places where God made his covenant to the Jewish people.
31:25Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached the heaven.
31:32And there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
31:37And behold, the Lord stood above it and said,
31:40I am the Lord God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac.
31:45The land on which you lie, I will give to you and your descendants.
31:52Genesis 28, verse 12 and 13.
32:04Yeah, closer to Jerusalem.
32:06We're getting closer.
32:11Jerusalem is mentioned 699 times in the Bible.
32:16Second place, a distant second, but second place is Bethel.
32:21It's mentioned 60 times in the Bible, the second most mentioned place.
32:25It has a huge biblical significance, spirituality, historical events.
32:33Of course, here we have a structure that was built probably over 1,000 years ago by crusaders.
32:43And why?
32:44Because they recognized this was a holy place, and they wanted to make a place of worship.
32:47Yes.
32:49It's a place of great history, too.
32:57After Solomon's kingdom ended, the Israelite nation split in two.
33:02There's the kingdom of Judah to the south, and the kingdom of Israel to the north.
33:08Now it came to pass, when all Israel heard that Jeroboam had come back, they sent for him and
33:14called him to the congregation, and made him king over all Israel.
33:20There was none who followed the house of David, but the tribe of Judah only.
33:261 Kings 12, verse 20.
33:32Now, Jeroboam was the first king of the north, of the Israelite kingdom.
33:38He had ten tribes, but he had no temple.
33:42The kingdom of Judah was only two tribes, but they were centered around Jerusalem.
33:46They kept the temple.
33:47So Jeroboam needs to somehow compete with Jerusalem.
33:51So he was looking for a place to come up with a substitute temple.
33:55Well, this is essentially the second holiest place that he could find within his territory.
34:00And so, right out there, he built a tabernacle, just like the tabernacle that we saw in Shiloh
34:07on our prior stop.
34:09Same dimensions, except for one thing.
34:12Instead of putting the Ark of the Covenant, which he no longer had, he put, of all things,
34:17a golden calf.
34:23Jeroboam ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the feast that
34:28was in Judah, and offered sacrifices on the altar.
34:34So he did at Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made.
34:38And at Bethel he installed the priests of the high places which he had made.
34:441 Kings 12, verse 32.
34:49You know, as the story ends, unfortunately 200 years later, the Syrians came in, they deported
34:55everyone, and those ten tribes were lost forever.
34:59So, on the one hand, we have this incredibly holy place where God promised Jacob he would
35:05make him into a great nation.
35:07We have the place where Jacob wrestled with the angel, and his name was changed to Israel.
35:12So Israel starts here.
35:18Then Jacob was left alone.
35:20And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of day.
35:24Now when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his hip.
35:30And the socket of Jacob's hip was out of joint as he wrestled with him.
35:35And he said, Let me go, for the day breaks.
35:39But he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me.
35:44So he said to him, What is your name?
35:48He said, Jacob.
35:52And he said, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with
35:59God and with men, and have prevailed.
36:04Genesis 32, verse 24 through 28.
36:13When I was younger, before I joined the government, this was really a focus of my charitable efforts.
36:22I was looking to help support a community that had deep biblical significance, that was kind
36:29of under the radar.
36:30Now, everyone knew about Jerusalem.
36:32I mean, Jerusalem's been, so Jerusalem didn't need any help.
36:34But here is sort of the second most mentioned place in the Bible.
36:40As much as the Jewish people rely upon their commerce and their wits and their army and their
36:46intelligence, they rely upon the spiritual underpinnings of the Bible, and we can't lose that.
37:07David, we would always hear about Israel beginning in 1948.
37:10Indeed, we celebrated its independence just the other day, you and I.
37:14But it doesn't start there.
37:19What would America be like without its history, without its founders, without the great monuments
37:25that were built in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere, about all the great battles and all the great
37:30leaders and all the great thoughts that animated our nation?
37:35If we lost all that, if we became all untethered to that, and sometimes I fear we are, what do
37:40we stand for as a nation?
37:42Well, it's the same thing here.
37:43The only difference is it's another 4,000 years.
37:45But it's the same point.
37:47And we become untethered from these sites, from these values, from these leaders, from
37:52the wisdom of God that accompanies it.
37:55We do lose our place as a great nation, I fear.
38:06This is one of the most biblically significant places in the world.
38:12And so let's hope people get to come here and see it, and to pray here, and to draw the
38:17inspiration
38:18from Jacob, who was ultimately Jacob, is Israel.
38:22Amen.
38:23Amen.
38:25Amen.
38:26Amen.
38:26Amen.
38:27Amen.
38:29Amen.
38:30Amen.
38:31Amen.
38:31Amen.
38:32Amen.
38:33Amen.
38:34Amen.
38:34Amen.
38:35Amen.
38:36Amen.
38:38Amen.
38:39Amen.
38:41Amen.
38:41Amen.
38:41Amen.
38:41Amen.
38:41Amen.
38:42Amen.
38:43Amen.
39:13Mike, we're taking our own little pilgrimage here along the road that your forefathers and my forefathers took to visit
39:19the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
39:21But in those days, you know, they'd walk for three or four days with their camels and their mules and
39:26their kids.
39:27And then finally they'd get to this spot and they'd see Jerusalem.
39:32It must have been an incredible feeling.
39:34It's breathtaking even now, David.
39:35They'd finish the walk and they'd end up in the pool of Siloam, which we're going to visit, and they
39:41would purify themselves.
39:43It was a famous movie that all roads lead to Rome.
39:46But in these days, you know, all roads lead to Jerusalem.
39:49And then they just, they'd see this magnificent temple.
39:54Probably get very energized all of a sudden from a very difficult trip and feel renewed again.
39:59You can feel, right?
40:00You can feel the history of these hills that we all read about in the Bible.
40:05Somewhere the Rock was built about a thousand years ago.
40:07We're talking about pilgrimages that took place between two and three thousand years ago.
40:12A couple thousand years before that.
40:21You know, when I pushed for the embassy to move to Jerusalem, lots of people accused me of dual loyalty.
40:29They said, you know, you represent the United States of America.
40:33You're not the ambassador of Israel.
40:35And you shouldn't care about this.
40:37But what I found was, you know, people like you pushed for exactly the same thing.
40:42But nobody ever accused you.
40:43Nobody ever accused me of that, yes.
40:44Nobody ever said that you were guilty of doing it.
40:45Now, why is that?
40:46Why am I so lucky as to be on the receiving end of that accusation?
40:49David, it's completely unfair.
40:51This is deeply important to the United States of America.
40:54People of every faith.
40:55It's important from a security perspective.
40:57We all know the things that happened on that very Temple Mount, the complexity of today's security operations there.
41:04But we more importantly know the history, the statement that was made as a diplomatic matter or a security matter.
41:10When the Israelis say this is where the capital is, when this is the proper homeland, for us to say,
41:14no, we're going to put our embassy in Tel Aviv.
41:15It makes no sense, right?
41:17When we declared the simple truth, it resolved all this angst that had been in existence for so many years.
41:24We actually didn't make this policy.
41:26This policy was made in 1995 by the United States of America.
41:30You know, we were not out on a limb here, you know?
41:33Yeah.
41:34We were trying to actualize a law that had like 400 members of Congress.
41:39Nearly unanimous, bipartisan to the nth degree, like nothing, like never happens.
41:44Right.
41:44No, it's so true.
41:46This rock, right?
41:47So don't wear the rock.
41:48That's Mount Moriah.
41:48Almost everyone thinks it was the rock upon which Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac.
41:55And of course, God made it very clear.
41:57It was a test.
41:58I don't want human sacrifices.
42:00I never want a human sacrifice.
42:02I guess the rest is a 4,000-year-old history.
42:05But right there, right under that dome.
42:09And Abraham built an altar there, and placed the wood in order.
42:14And he bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.
42:19And Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
42:26But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham.
42:33So he said, Here I am.
42:37And he said, Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him.
42:42For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from
42:50me.
42:54Genesis 22, verse 9 through 12.
43:02I remember, David, too, the first time I came here.
43:04It was long before I was in government service.
43:06It would have been 2005 or 2006.
43:07We brought our son here.
43:09And I'd studied the 67 and 73 wars.
43:13I don't have that many memories of my early years.
43:17But I have one very clear memory, which was in June of 1967.
43:22I remember waking up in the morning.
43:23I walked downstairs.
43:24My parents were in tears.
43:26Oh, yeah.
43:26And they were tears of joy.
43:28And they had just seen on TV that Jerusalem had been reunified by the Israeli defense forces.
43:37Rabbi Gorin, who was then the chief rabbi of Israel, stood there at the western wall blowing
43:42a shofar.
43:47They were just crying, crying, you know, uncontrollably.
43:52I thought something was wrong.
44:17It took a while before I could kind of understand what was going on.
44:20But I understood just how deeply this meant to them and how, to them, it was the realization
44:26of a 2,000-year-old dream.
44:32You know, in our prayer book, and this is true, by the way, of Orthodox prayer books,
44:37conservative prayer books, Reformed prayer books, every Jew prays for God to restore
44:43Israel to Jerusalem.
44:45I mean, Zionism.
44:46Zion is another word for Jerusalem.
44:47And that's what we prayed for all these years.
44:50And here it was being actualized.
44:52It's so deeply enmeshed in the Jewish psyche for thousands of years.
44:57And, you know, and here it is.
45:00Oh, come to me again.
45:09Oh.
45:12Oh.
45:15Oh.
45:18Oh.
45:23Oh.
45:27I'm reliability.
45:32What a great time to be alive, you know, in Jewish history.
45:36I mean, my grandparents couldn't have imagined this.
45:38My grandparents were busy trying to survive, stay alive.
45:42You know, it's important, too.
45:43Right down beneath us are Christians and Jews and Muslims working together, sharing a democracy, a robust, rambunctious democracy.
45:55I think this is the greatest symbol of religious freedom in the world because you have the three Abrahamic faiths
46:01right on top of each other, right on top of each other.
46:04And people want to focus on the two or three days a year when it explodes or when there's conflict.
46:09You should focus on the 360 days a year when people actually live and pray together and coexist together.
46:14And it's a miraculous phenomenon.
46:17You know, one of the things that guides me are the Psalms, and one that I'm particularly fond of is
46:22122, which speaks about praying for the peace of Jerusalem.
46:26You know, King David, who wrote this, this is one of the songs of ascent, the ascent of the Levites
46:31to Jerusalem.
46:31He said, I was always happy when I was told that I was going to visit the house of God.
47:04Jesus came here often.
47:06This was a place he loved.
47:08He knew that this was a place where he could build on a peaceful understanding of the world.
47:12And I'm still counting on it to be just that.
47:15When we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we're really praying for the peace in the world.
47:20David, you know, as we were working our way through it, we were dealing with the machine, the bureaucracy, nations
47:25of the world, trying to get it right.
47:27But in the end, God was driving this path forward.
47:30You and I both deeply believe that it was he who ultimately gave us the capacity, the wind, the grace
47:36to work on this and enable this to happen.
47:39If someone were just doing some statistics, you know, I think the probability certainly of me getting from being a
47:47New York lawyer to having the ability to work with the president and with you to help guide our policy,
47:54our unprecedented policy towards Israel and towards Jerusalem.
47:58The odds were overwhelming.
48:00This was all, in my sense, God's work.
48:03And I always wrestle with the idea of how much is my faith a part of my government service?
48:10Because, you know, we're obviously we're we're a nation that doesn't establish a religion.
48:14But at the same time, you know, this is who we are.
48:17And this is who the people who are who founded our country.
48:20And, you know, having faith gives you the ability to have some confidence that you're on the right track.
48:26I'm a wide open evangelical Christian.
48:28I get asked all the time, how do you square that with your duty to America?
48:31And the answer is, it's who I am.
48:34My obligations.
48:35I raise my right hand to defend the United States.
48:37But my, my, my worldview, the way I think about human dignity and the way I understand history, we surrendered
48:44to his understanding and he gave us the guidance to get to where we ultimately did.
48:48And by the way, when you raised your right hand, you did it on a Bible.
48:51I did indeed.
48:52Exactly.
49:09David taught us the importance of repentance, and he taught us the mercy of God, God's ability to forgive.
49:16I think of the images of tens of thousands of people making their way in this pilgrimage, Gentiles as well.
49:22You know, the prophets speak of all the nations coming to Jerusalem.
49:25How did our forefathers know what human rights were unalienable?
49:29How did they know about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
49:31So those rights all find their source in the Old Testament.
49:34Where was that given to mankind?
49:37Right here, out of Zion, shuttle forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
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