Those who accepted Peter’s message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. –Acts 2:41
“That day” was the Feast of Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus’ ascension into heaven. Peter, newly filled with the Holy Spirit, had just delivered a sizzler of a sermon to a Jerusalem crowd who were “cut to the heart.”
A man crippled from birth was carried to the temple gate called Beautiful. –Acts 3:2
Here is a place where we can say with certainty that Jesus walked—and not only Jesus but Peter and John and Paul. For this, along with the neighboring gate discussed in Chapter 5, was the main entrance onto the Temple Mount.
The devil led Jesus to the highest point of the temple in Jerusalem. -Lk 4:9
The highest point, or pinnacle, of the Temple was the southeast corner overlooking the Kidron Valley hundreds of feet below. According to Josephus, “If anyone looked down from this summit he would be giddy, his sight being unable to encompass such an immense depth.”
About the middle of the feast Jesus went up to the temple and began teaching. –Jn 7:14
Near the southwest corner of the Temple Mount, about halfway up the wall, is a curious projection of stones whose purpose remained a mystery for many centuries, until in 1838 an American scholar named Edward Robinson identified it.
Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. –John 5:2
Reading this verse, one may wonder why there were five colonnades rather than four. Isn’t a pentagon an odd shape for a pool in the Holy City?
Jesus spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam.” –John 9:6-7
On an October day at Jerusalem’s Feast of Tabernacles, a man who had been born blind gazed in wonder at a new world. The first thing he saw, bending down to wash mud from his eyes, was his own reflection in the water of the Pool of Siloam.
Then Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David. –2 Ch 3:1
The most outstanding landmark in all of present-day Jerusalem is neither a Christian nor a Jewish site, but Muslim.
“The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former,” says the Lord of hosts. “And in this place I will give peace.” –Haggai 2:9
The Temple Institute in Israel is an organization devoted to establishing the Third Temple, a new Jewish temple to be built on the site of the Second Temple, precisely where the Muslim Dome of the Rock now stands.
As He was leaving the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” –Mk 13:1
This poor disciple takes the prize for the New Testament’s Most Ill-Timed Remark.
In my family we traditionally refer to the day before Christmas Eve as Christmas Adam. Similarly, Boxing day is Christmas Cain (or sometimes Christmas Candy Cane) and the day after is Christmas Abel, and so on.