Megiddo

• Megiddo

149:0.1The sec­ond pub­lic preach­ing tour of Gal­i­lee be­gan on Sun­day, Oc­to­ber 3, A.D. 28, and con­tin­ued for al­most three months, end­ing on De­cem­ber 30. Par­tic­i­pat­ing in this ef­fort were Je­sus and his twelve apos­tles, as­sisted by the newly re­cruited corps of 117 evan­ge­lists and by nu­mer­ous other in­ter­ested per­sons. On this tour they vis­ited Gadara, Ptole­mais, Japhia, Dabaritta, Megiddo, Jezreel, Scythopo­lis, Ta­ri­chea, Hip­pos, Gamala, Beth­saida-Ju­lias, and many other cities and vil­lages.

126:1.2This hill, a lit­tle more than one hun­dred years pre­vi­ously, had been the “high place of Baal,” and now it was the site of the tomb of Sim­eon, a re­puted holy man of Is­rael. From the sum­mit of this hill of Sim­eon, Je­sus looked out over Naz­a­reth and the sur­round­ing coun­try. He would gaze upon Megiddo and re­call the story of the Egyp­tian army win­ning its first great vic­tory in Asia; and how, later on, an­other such army de­feated the Judean king Josiah. Not far away he could look upon Taanach, where Deb­o­rah and Barak de­feated Sis­era. In the dis­tance he could view the hills of Dothan, where he had been taught Joseph’s breth­ren sold him into Egyp­tian slav­ery. He then would shift his gaze over to Ebal and Ger­izim and re­count to him­self the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Ja­cob, and Abim­elech. And thus he re­called and turned over in his mind the his­toric and tra­di­tional events of his fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple.

127:6.4In mak­ing this trip to Je­ru­sa­lem, he went by way of Megiddo, An­tipa­tris, and Ly­dda, in part cov­er­ing the same route tra­versed when he was brought back to Naz­a­reth on the re­turn from Egypt. He spent four days go­ing up to the Pass­over and thought much about the past events which had tran­spired in and around Megiddo, the in­ter­na­tional bat­tle­field of Pales­tine.