ONDE JESUS FEZ MILAGRES? Visitando o Mar da Galileia – Israel com a Aline

Shalom and welcome back to Israel with Aline! We are in Galilee, more specifically on the Sea of Galilee side, and today we are going to visit together the sites of two of Jesus’ miracles; miracles related to fish and the Sea of Galilee. So if you are ready, let’s get started! The Sea of Galilee, is fundamental to the State of Israel in modern times, but also for Israel in Biblical times. First of all the waters of the Sea of Galilee are freshwaters, it is in fact a gigantic lake with 13 miles of extension. And from it comes much of the drinking water for Israel, and it is also a place where people fished and fished in Biblical times. So it is very important for life and for the economy, and mainly why? Because Jesus chose to do most of his ministry here, around this lake. We have for example Capernaum, which is very close to here, a few kilometers to the north, the city where He lived and did most of His miracles. We also have nearby the City of Magdala, where Mary Magdalene lived and where Jesus will also pass by. We have a whole area of miracles here that will be the focus of today’s tour, and also at the end of the tour, I promise you that we will enter together into the waters of the Sea of Galilee, but let’s first understand what is the place right next door. The story that takes place here, is written in the book of John; chapter 21 and it takes place after the Resurrection of Jesus; when Jesus is crucified, dies, is resurrected, the apostles mostly return to Galilee, go back to being fish catchers. “Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.” John 21:2-3 So they hear someone here where we are shouting to them, “throw the net to the right side of the boat!” And when they do, they pull in the net which is going to be full of 153 big fish! And then they understand that the one who was here on the shore was the resurrected Jesus. And they come and bring the boat and stop here, and Jesus will be waiting for them with a table set up what we call here “Mensa Christi”, the table of Christ where they will have this great meal together is where this church is later built. Here you can already see the staircases of the original church that was built in the Byzantine Period, the first Christian period in Israel. And thanks also to these archaeological finds, we know that this is the site of the Miraculous Fishing and of the meeting of Peter and the other Apostles with Jesus. As you can see, this church will be destroyed and rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt several times, we can see the church was built in 1933, less than 100 years old! For the Israeli dating system, this is super modern. But why am I talking about this specific site? Because just as important, or maybe more important than the fishing itself, will be the conversation between Peter and Jesus in this place. When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these? Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you”. Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. John 21: 15-17 And one interesting thing about that passage, is that Jesus asks Peter three times; “Peter do you love me?” Why three times, wouldn’t once be enough? We have to remember that we are talking about chapter 21, we are talking about after the Resurrection, which means that a few days before when Jesus was arrested inside Caiaphas’ house, Peter will deny Jesus three times. So what he is actually doing is giving a second chance: if Peter denied him three times, now Jesus is giving him the chance to affirm his love three times. For the last dialogue between the two to be one of love and not of denial. And that is why when I come here, especially in normal or more normal times, when this place is full of thousands of pilgrims; on average 8,000 people pass here every day! And it is a beautiful place to sit and talk about God’s love, to talk about forgiveness, and to talk about second chances. We are entering this modern church, but in the background, we can see the foundations of the original church from the beginning of the 4th century, and also the original stone from the time of Jesus; according to tradition, this is where the meal of Jesus, Peter, and the disciples took place. And part of what we know about this original church is thanks to Egeria and the book she wrote, she was a Christian Pilgrim who passed by here in the year 380 and tells us details of the place. Another miracle connected to the fish happened very close to here: the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes, and that is where we are going now! The next place we are going to is very close so we are literally walking along, and this whole area is called Tabgha or Hepta Pegon which means “the seven springs”, because here as the name implies there are seven springs of water flowing into the Sea of Galilee. We arrived at the place of the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes, it is inside this church today but before we go inside I want to show you some super cool things that we have outside, starting with this stone circle. Let’s give you a few seconds to look at this here and try to guess what it is, I’ll start telling you how old it is; this is from the 5th century, it is a little bit older than 1500 years and it was brought from another church, not from this church originally but from a church in the city of Hebron, the city of the patriarchs. Take a closer look, could you figure out what this is? This is a baptistery, this is where people were baptized! In ancient times, people entered the church after being baptized, it was a time when there were many conversions and people came here and could be baptized, and as you can see from the size of the church, an adult could enter also stooping down, so here we see that adult people were baptized. Comment below if you guessed or not that this was a baptismal font. And this one, can you also guess what it was? As you can see it is also circular, but it is made of basaltic stone, which was a common stone here in the region. And the hint of what this is is actually behind me, you can see there are olive trees, have you figured it out yet? This here is an olive press! Here the region has seven fruits, it has the seven fruits of the land of Israel, one of them is the olive from which olive oil is extracted. So the olives were placed here, this stone that was placed upright, it rolled over and here was extracted a paste that would later be filtered and from it came out the olive oil, which was used from anointing to the daily life of the people here in the region. Let’s take advantage of this moment that we are about to enter the church to read the biblical text: When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed their sick. As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.” Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.”Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were leftover. Matthew 14:13-20 And as we saw in the biblical passage, not only do they eat, but they are satiated and have food leftover. How much food is left? Twelve baskets and the twelve is obviously not by chance, it is not by chance that it was specifically placed in the biblical text. When I tell you twelve, what do you remember? Maybe the twelve apostles, but if we talk about the population living here that was a Jewish population two thousand years ago, and if you say the number twelve, the first thing that comes to their minds are the twelve tribes of Israel! So when twelve baskets are left, I mean twelve baskets are left as the twelve tribes of Israel, I mean like all the people of Israel! It is a message that not only this food was for the five thousand people who were here, not counting women and children, but also that it was an open invitation to all those who are not here, if they want there is enough for everyone. So Jesus leaves here an open invitation to all, and my invitation to you is to come in and see the church, come on! The church we are entering is modern, it was built in 1982 but built on the remains of two older churches: the first one is from the year 350 and the second one from the year 480. But this church will be completely destroyed by the Persians in the year 614 and will be forgotten, nobody knew the exact place of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes until 1932 when they started the archaeological excavations here in this place, where they found the remains of this church including the floor. The floor that we are walking on, folks, is original, more than 1500 years old! And it is also known that the miracle happened here, thanks to Egeria who tells about the church that was found now, centuries later. The original mosaic, it is huge and beautiful, but the most important part is the one right here in front of the altar which tells what happened here, you can see the two fish on the side, and in the middle a basket with four loaves of bread. But the question that arises is: why four loaves of bread when we know clearly from the biblical text that the miracle was two fish and five loaves? The first Christians in the Holy Land, who were the ones who built this church, they knew the biblical text but they are here giving us a message; it is not that there are only four loaves in the church, the fifth loaf is present, it is present in the form of Jesus who is the bread of life! So we see that these four loaves are right in front of the altar, where the fifth loaf is placed. And now that we have left the church, we have returned to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. And now the long-awaited moment has arrived, we are going to enter together into the crystal clear waters of the Sea of Galilee, so no shoes on, guys, I’m going to get ready and in a second we are going to enter together. The Sea of Galilee, as we said, is in reality a large freshwater lake. And it is known by several names; such as Sea of Galilee, Sea of Gennesaret, Sea of Tiberias, or in Hebrew Kinneret. And it is 656 feet below sea level, and its deepest point is 141 feet. Galilee is the most fertile and greenest area in all of Israel and within the waters, there is also a lot of life, we have a lot of animals that live in the area and within the waters there are twenty-seven different species of fish. The most famous of them is Peter’s fish, which according to local tradition is the kind of fish from which Peter takes the coin from the fish’s mouth and it is very popular here in Israel, and most of the people who come to Galilee also stop one day to have Peter’s fish for lunch. And coming out of the water we see a lot of tiny little shells on the shore, and they also show us how much life there is in these waters. I hope you enjoyed getting to know the site of the Miraculous Fishing and the multiplication of the loaves and fishes here in Galilee, don’t forget to subscribe to our channel for more videos directly from Israel, a big kiss and see you next time!