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We're here at the top of the Mount of Olives. This is a beautiful outlook over the entire
city of Jerusalem and across the other way of this valley, you can see the Temple Mount
area, the Dome of the Rock, where Mount Moriah would have been, where Abraham was going to
sacrifice Isaac, where the Temple was built during Solomon's days, where it was rebuilt
later, where the mosque, the Dome of the Rock, I'm sorry, at the right, and the al-Aqsa Mosque
at the left, currently stands. And from this Mount of Olives is where Jesus would often
come with His disciples to pray. In Luke 21:37 it says, each day He'd teach at the Temple
and each night He'd spend on the hill, called the Mount of Olives. Part of the reason, it
was just a close distance, and you can see the Temple steps where He would teach, the
Southern Steps there. And then they would come up here to the Mount of Olives to pray
in the evenings. And that was a Sabbath's day walk, just over a half a mile. A Sabbath's
day walk had to be 2,000 cubits. A cubit was from your fingertip to the elbow. And so they
weren't supposed to walk more than 2,000 of these distances, 2,000 cubits, and so from
the steps to the Mount of Olives was a Sabbath's Day walk. The other important things that
happened here on the Mount of Olives, it's first mentioned in the Bible back when David
talked about the hill and fled through the hill east of the city. And then it's mentioned
again in the book of Acts, at the end, where Jesus goes up into heaven from the Mount of
Olives, and the angel appears to the disciples and says, "Why are you looking up here, in
the same way that you say Jesus go into heaven, He will return from heaven." So that's the
exciting part of the stories of the Mount of Olives, that it's not just what happened
in the past, but what's going to happen here in the future. When Jesus returns, He will
be returning here, through the Mount of Olives.