Caesarea: Where The Gentiles Were Grafted In

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Caesarea is a really special place for those of us who are both Christians and Gentiles.

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The reason is, is because Caesarea is the place where we were grafted in.

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In February of 2020, I had the great privilege of being able to go to Israel with Harvest of Israel tours out of Morristown, Tennessee.

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Harvest of Israel took us to about 40 different locations in Israel, and we got to see lots of great things.

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Dean Hahn is the man behind Harvest of Israel tours, and with the help of Dale Schneitman, these guys did a great job of safely and efficiently getting us moved around Israel to see all these great locations.

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There are two Caesareas in Israel. There's the one we're talking about in this video, which is also called

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Caesarea Meritema, or Caesarea by the Sea. There's also Caesarea Philippi, which we'll talk about in another video.

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Caesarea Meritema is a very special place for those of us who are Gentile Christians, because this is the place where the

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Gentiles were grafted in to the nation of Israel. Caesarea existed as early as the 3rd century

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BC, but it was King Herod who took it and enlarged it and made it a

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Roman city. Herod, or Herod the Great as he's known, was the man who was famous for killing all of the infants under 2 years old in his attempt to murder

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Jesus when he was a child. Some things you'll see in this video are the famous Roman aqueduct that brought water into the city from the north.

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We'll see the Hippodrome, where chariot races took place. Also the Pilate Stone, which was found in Caesarea in 1961.

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And stick around to the end and I'll throw in an amusing little extra that I think you'll like.

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But for now, let's go hear what Dean Hahn has to say in the amphitheater at Caesarea.

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I just want to share with you one thing before we talk about Caesarea. Because there are a lot of Christians that know a lot about the

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New Testament, but their knowledge of the Old Testament is very weak, except for maybe a few stories like David and Goliath and, you know, things that we use for illustrations.

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And sometimes I think that believers think that the Bible is like, God had two plans.

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Plan A, he started out with the Jews, it didn't work out so well, so he sent Jesus and now we're the church and so there's two plans.

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I want you to understand there's only one plan that God had. From Genesis to Revelation is all one plan.

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Let me give you four words that I think will just help you. Just write these in the margin of your notes.

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The entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation can be put together through four words.

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Are you ready? I'm going to give you the words and I want to comment on each one of them. The seed, the seed,

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S -E -E -D, the seed, the soil, they all start with S, the

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Savior, and the Sovereign. Okay?

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Do you see those four words? Let's talk about those four words. First of all, the seed of Genesis 3 .15.

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Remember when man sinned? And do you remember that God cursed Satan or the serpent?

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And he basically said, Genesis 3 .15, someday a woman is going to have a male child.

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You will be able to bruise his heel, but he will crush your head. Who is that talking about, church?

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That's talking about the coming of the Lord Jesus. Now what seed line or lineage would the

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Messiah come through? The Jewish people. Remember, remember through Seth and then

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Noah, and Noah had three sons, right? Through which line of Noah's three sons would the seed line continue?

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Shem, the Shemites, have you heard the term anti -Semite, anti -Shemite?

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It's the seed line or lineage through which the Jewish people run. Follow that.

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We're not going to trace the whole lineage, but I'll give you some major ones. Follow that to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

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Remember Jacob had 12 sons. Through which of the 12 sons would the lineage continue?

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The fourth son, Judah, correct. And then on through the Old Testament to David, and finally through the lineage of David, who would come, church?

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Jesus. Do you see that? It's all about the seed that goes all the way through the

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Bible. Secondly, the soil, the soil is the land.

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You know, what's so important about the land, the land, the land? You hear this all the time. Well, the land is

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God's stage. I want you to think about this. Where did all of the events from Genesis to Revelation, almost the entire

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Bible, where did it happen? Right here on the stage. Think about Jesus for a moment.

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Where was he born? Bethlehem. Bethlehem. What nation is that in? Israel. Israel. By the way, the answer to all these questions is

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Israel. Where did he grow up? Nazareth. Nazareth.

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What nation is that in? Israel. What was his headquarters in the Sea of Galilee? Capernaum.

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Capernaum. What nation is that in? Israel. Israel. Where did he die on the cross? Jerusalem. Where did he die?

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Rose from the grave? Jerusalem. Ascended to the Father? The Mount of Olives? In Jerusalem.

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Where is he coming back according to Zechariah? This is the stage. You are walking on the stage where God not only enacted his divine drama in the past, but will so, thank you very much, will so in the future as well.

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I thought it was a good statement, but maybe not that. So, get it together. The seed, the soil, all of it leads to the

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Savior who came to die on the cross, to pay for our sins, to be risen from the grave, and what does the book of Revelation say?

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Someday he's coming back as the sovereign. Someday he's coming back to rule and to reign, and where from, church?

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From Jerusalem. From the stage. That puts the Bible together from Genesis all the way to Revelation.

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Now here's another way you can say it. The whole thing is about the lineage, the land, the lamb, and the lion who is coming again.

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The lineage, the land, the lamb who died on the cross for us, shed his blood for us, and the lion who is coming again.

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Does that make sense? That puts the whole thing. It's not two plans, it's one plan.

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Now, let's talk about this place for a moment. Not just the theater, but Caesarea.

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Shrug has already given us a great history, and the film hopefully helped you. Who was the builder of this whole place, this whole city?

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And why did he build it? He wanted to keep the Romans out of Haifa, which is just north of here.

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A very Jewish religious city. He did not want them, that was the port city back in the day.

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So hey, let's build another port, let's keep the Romans there, and we'll keep everybody separated and we'll all get along and sing

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Kumbaya. They only left here, the Roman soldiers in large contingencies of troops, left here only three times.

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I think, I didn't hear, I don't have an earpiece, so I didn't hear, did Shrug talk about this?

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The three times that they went to Jerusalem in mass were the, remember there were seven feasts of the

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Lord, Leviticus 23, but three of them were pilgrimage feasts, Passover or Pesach, Pentecost or Shavuot, and then in the fall,

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Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles. That was the three main times that they sent large numbers of troops to Jerusalem, why?

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Because there'd be a lot of people there and a lot of possibility for trouble to go on. So keep that in your mind.

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So look at your book at page 15, I want to just give you some things that I hope will help you to put this together.

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So first of all, remember there are six Herods in the Bible. Six Herods, but three of them are related to Caesarea, the place that we're at.

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Look at the first one there, King Herod the Great. Your word is great there, right in great.

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He's the builder and the founder of Caesarea. We'll talk about some of these other Herods, but I want to primarily concentrate on the

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Herods of Caesarea. Look at number five, King Herod Agrippa I.

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King Herod Agrippa I. He's the one that killed James. By the way, does anybody here besides First Baptist folks know what

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James' Hebrew name was? Jacob, Yaakov.

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I told our church the other night, turn to the book of Jacob in your Bible. Some of them looked at me like a calf looking at a new gate.

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Yaakov, Jesus' half -brother. It was Herod Agrippa I that killed

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James, the brother of John. He's the one that imprisoned Peter in Acts chapter 12.

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And then look at the sixth one, top of the next page, King Herod Agrippa II.

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Remember he's the guy that heard Paul's defense. Paul shares his whole testimony. Paul would have been standing on that stage down there.

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Agrippa would have been sitting right here, right here, right there. He would have been sitting right here listening as Paul gave his defense.

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Remember he's the guy that said, Paul, you almost persuaded me. Remember that old song that we sang at church,

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Almost Persuaded? You almost persuaded me to become a Christian, to become a follower of this

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Jesus. So those are the six Herods, but the three that are real prominent, and you can go back and trace this in your

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Bible where you don't have time each stop to go through a detailed explanation. But let me also share with you the four main characters in the

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Bible that deal with Caesarea. They all start with the letter P.

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The letter P, alright? Are you ready? First of all, Philip.

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Remember the first deacon or one of the first deacons. Philip, he lived here in Caesarea.

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He had four Anne Gramlott daughters that proclaimed and preached.

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And so we remember that, and there's the scripture. You can go back and mark this in your Bible. The second

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P related to Caesarea is Pilate. You know that liberal theologians did not believe the

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New Testament account that Pilate actually was the governor during the time of Jesus until in 1961 they found the

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Pilate stone that proclaimed Pilate as the governor of Judea just exactly the way the

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Bible. We'll see a replica of it as we go toward the ruins of Herod's fortress or his mansion that he built out here, alright?

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Here's the third one. Remember Paul. This was an important place for Paul.

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This place may have been built by Herod the Great, but listen to this. It became a gospel harbor.

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This is the place that Paul sailed out of on his first missionary journey to proclaim the gospel, and he came back into this harbor from his second missionary journey.

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So this whole harbor that we're going to see, you can think of it, hey Herod, thanks a lot for building this thing because you launched the gospel to the world.

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And so that's the apostle Paul. And of course he was imprisoned here under house arrest for two years.

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But the last P that I want you to see, and this is a really important one to us as Gentiles, is

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Peter. Peter. How many of you remember the story in Acts chapter 10 of what happened?

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Do you remember Cornelius, a Roman centurion, where was he at? Why do you think the

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Roman centurion would have been here? That's where they were stationed. Peter's down where?

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Joppa, which is Tel Aviv that we came through, the airport area. He's down there, and he's about to eat lunch, but he falls asleep first, takes a little nap.

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And as he is falling asleep, he has a vision. Do you remember the vision?

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He sees a sheet filled with barbecue coming down. The only thing missing was a sweet baby raise.

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You know what I'm talking about. He sees it, and God says, listen, what I have made clean, you cannot call unclean.

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What was he doing? I'm getting ready to include the Gentiles. I'm getting ready to graft them in.

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Now at the same time that he's having that vision, Cornelius up here is having an experience, and the angel says, send men down the coast to Peter, bring him back with you.

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And what happened, guys? Acts chapter 10. He got saved, but we can also say it was like the

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Gentile Pentecost. Remember that in Acts chapter 10? And the

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Holy Spirit came upon, this is the place that we got grafted in.

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Everything to this time, think about it, had all been Jewish. Pentecost was all

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Jewish. Why were they at Pentecost? What was that? Shavuot.

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It was a Jewish festival. It was all Jewish. The Ethiopian eunuch was

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Jewish when Philip, he got saved and was baptized. We didn't get in on it until Acts chapter 10 and the story of Cornelius and being grafted in.

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And why is that important? It fulfilled a prophecy of Noah. I want my brother to come and read this.

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I asked him if he would read Genesis chapter 9, I believe it's verse 17, 27.

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I want you to listen to this prophecy. Remember when Noah was prophesying over his three sons?

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Listen to this and see if this does not make, this will make a Presbyterian want to shout. Listen to this.

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I put my hat on just to mess with you all. Yeah. May God enlarge

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Japheth, may he dwell in the tents of Shem. May God enlarge

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Japheth, who is Japheth? The father of the Gentiles. And may he dwell where?

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We stepped into the tent of the Shemites through Jewish Jesus Messiah right here in Caesarea.

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Do you understand that? It's where we get in on it. For God so loved who?

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The world. And this is where he includes us. For God so loved.

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This is where we were grafted in. One more verse that I want David to read out of John chapter one, verse four.

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What was it David? John 10, 14.

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Yeah. Come and read that. 16. John 10, 16. Alright, listen to this.

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These are the words of Jesus. I want you to hear what Jesus said before his crucifixion.

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I have other sheep that are not from this fold. Those also I must lead and they will listen to my voice, so there shall be one flock, one shepherd.

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He is the other sheep, guys. Praise the Lord. It's us.

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It's us. We're the other sheep he was talking about. And the whole story of Cornelius becoming a believer, the

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Holy Spirit coming on him. He steps into the tent of Shem.

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Don't forget our Jewish roots. Do not forget that we are a part of the family through the line of the

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Jewish people. And through the Jewish Messiah who was the savior of the world.

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Does that make sense? I hope you can put that all together because we're going to be talking about it all trip long.

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So the seed, the soil, the savior, and the sovereign, the three herods of Caesarea, the four guys, their names start with P.

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Don't forget that because we're going to be talking about them. But this is a great place to start because this is where we got started.

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So praise the Lord. Amen? Amen. Let's talk about a few of the things that Dean mentioned in his lesson in the amphitheater.

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One of them was the Pilate stone. Now this is a broken stone that has an inscription about Pontius Pilate.

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This is the same Pilate that sentenced Jesus to death on the cross at the behest of the

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Jewish leaders. Now this inscription was found in 1961 during an archeological dig and it was not found in its original location.

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It had actually, centuries after its inscription, had been used or reused as a block in a staircase of all things.

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One of the most obvious features at Caesarea was the hippodrome or as we might call today a racetrack.

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But it was a course where they had chariot races.

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This track was about 165 feet wide and 1 ,300 feet long.

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It seated about 13 ,000 and we were told that the best seats in the house were at the two ends where the track made a sharp

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U -turn. If there was going to be any kind of wrecks or overturns of the chariots, this is where it would happen and this is where the visitors would get to see the carnage of any accidents that happened as they made that tight turn at the end.

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We could also see the ruins of Herod's palace. Herod built part of his palace on a little strip of land that jetted out into the sea.

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You can still see the foundations and what one might suppose was a courtyard was actually a swimming pool.

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So I can only imagine what this place must have looked like when he lived there and when he built this, but having a house that sticks out to the end of the ocean is not too shabby.

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It took a lot of water, needless to say, to support a population of that size and there was an aqueduct that brought water from about six miles from the north.

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This aqueduct carried water from a spring that was just south of Mount Carmel.

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Now the thing that I mentioned that was an amusing little spectacle to see that I kind of found humorous, as you walked down into the

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Hippodrome from the platform that supported Herod's palace, there was a ramp and on the left side of that ramp leading into the

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Hippodrome was a public toilet. So evidently the Romans had no concept of privacy and we were told men and women alike used this facility out in the open and where you can see this lady seated here was the place where you went and right underneath the stones that made up the toilet seat was a little trough that had running water that carried away your waste.

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Now down at the bottom where her feet are, you will see another small little trough.

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We were told this is where people would wash their hands after they were finished using the bathroom.

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A number of really important events took place in the city of Caesarea in the days of the early church, not the least of which is that this is the place where those of us who are

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Gentiles were grafted into the nation of Israel and became members of the church and followers of Jesus.

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I will be making more videos from my trip to Israel. If you like this video, please consider subscribing to the channel and then click the bell so that you will be notified when we post new videos.