24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. Jn. 20:24-29
Recently, a brother came to me and he wanted to know whether there is any spiritual merit in one visiting the land of Israel.
“Absolutely none”, I told him. “You might as well walk up to that tree and back”, I said, showing him an old, gnarled tree standing nearby.
The man then went on to tell me about how he had once visited a church and there he overheard a preacher talking about how he had made a pilgrimage to Israel and claiming that, while there, he had been baptized in the River Jordan. Upon which the congregation went into a frenzy of cheering and assorted melodrama.
“I have never been to Israel”, I told the brother. “But, according to what I have read in the Bible, the Jordan is not a particularly clean river (2 Kings 5:12). That man went into a whole lot of trouble for nothing.”
Ours is a walk of faith. It has nothing to do with this physical or material world. We are called to behold the spiritual, not the physical. In Galatians 6:15 the Apostle Paul writes:
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.”
Making a pilgrimage to Israel does not make one “a new creature”. On the contrary, it is the equivalent of the circumcision of which the Apostle Paul writes here that it avails nothing. Visiting Israel makes no one spiritual. Walking the streets where Jesus walked might get up all the goose bumps in you, but it will not make you spiritual. Much less getting baptized in the River Jordan.
What makes us spiritual is when we get the revelation of the cross of Jesus Christ in our hearts. Becoming a man or woman of the Spirit is a spiritual journey, not a physical one.
But preachers today have discovered the spiritual blindness of believers and they are exploiting it to the max. They are not only making pilgrimages to Israel but they are going even further than that. They are bringing back purported spiritual artefacts from the holy land and selling them to believers back home: today there is “holy” water, “holy” oil, “holy” sand and nearly “holy” anything being shipped back from Israel to Africa to be sold at exorbitant prices to unsuspecting believers.
Christians, on the other hand, want things that can be seen, not believed for. It is easier to believe that “holy” oil from Israel can work a greater miracle than the unseen anointing of the Holy Spirit. People believe all kinds of things; but these same people find it very difficult to believe in the simplicity of scripture. But our faith is not built on Israel. It is built on the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. That is what we should desire to see more. There, we will discover the true power and the true wisdom of God, which is the power to crucify our flesh and to allow Christ to dwell in us.
I will be talking more about this in my next post. For now, Adieu, and may the Lord bless you.
[When David killed Goliath, he was in the Spirit]
Cross of Christ 