Wrongly accused at the Jesus prison

We toured the ruins where Jesus was brought before Caiaphus, after the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus was wrongly accused and taken to prison.   Caiaphus then turned Jesus over to Pontias Pilate.

It was sobering to read scripture around this and be in the actual prisons where Jesus and other apostles were held. 

There were a ton of tour busses and tourists at this site.

There was a  group coming in the out, trying to skip the long line.  The tour guide with a flag held high, just kept saying, "Coming through.  Keep walking" to his group. This was not cool and causing trouble.  Our 54 people were all crushed into a waiting room.  Waiting to go down into the pit space and have a short devotional.     This wrong way group was plowing through following their guide with really no where to go.  Other tour guides and people were telling them to turn around,  go back, this is the wrong way. 

  

 One of our big men - 6’5- football linebacker was standing filling a door way. Arms folded.  He just leaned his body over into the line. And said calmly, “Turn around.”   The group continued through.    We all just rolled our eyes.

 It was a small claustrophobic space and we all just had to stand squished and sweaty together.  We waited for the “extra long devotional group” down in the prison pit, so we could have a turn.

Next thing we know this “wrong-way-tour-guide” was in the face of our tour guide accusing our man of pushing one of their women down. The tour guide was just taking the woman at her word, he hadn’t witnessed anything because he was way out in front of his group pushing his way through the crowds backwards with his flag held high.   He was trying to take a picture of our tour guide’s badge to turn him in and saying “No man should even be touching another woman let alone pushing her down”… It was a big screamy thing.   We were all stunned.  We said it didn’t happen and took a picture of his badge to turn him in.

Well we shook it off and took our turn down in the pit and learned how Christ was lowered with a rope under his armpits to the prison floor— food and water would have also been lowered down this way.  The floor of this pit would have been a mire- full of water and scum and excrement-so no one could lay or sit down.  It was hard to hear about Jesus being so mistreated. 

We got back out onto the steps of the courtyard  to talk about Peter denying Christ, and the wrong way tour guide and this woman and their group started yelling at us, shouting that we "shouldn’t touch, or push a woman down, shame on you"…. the woman was crying.  We were all stunned, because she was lying, this didn’t happen. It was crazy.  She was demanding an apology.  Many eye witnesses in our group came forward to say what they saw.   This woman could not be appeased- nor her group.  We just said, “Sorry,” and scurried out to our bus.  It was weird.

BUT…..so interesting that this happened here where Christ was also falsely accused.  We all felt this righteous indignation. This feeling of helplessness about not being believed. 

I wish this woman and her group well… but it definitely put a cloud over our last day.   And then the rain actually fell.