Israel Tour 16 Nazareth view of Jezreel

This video is one of several that can provide an overview of Israel and the Bible stories that  happened in a particular region. For more videos like this one, search for “Israel Tour.” The red lines on the map represent major highways that connected Europe and Asia with Africa. Those roads met at an intersection in the Jezreel Valley at Megiddo. In the New Testament era, a Roman legion was stationed at the Megiddo Pass, effectively controlling domestic and international land travel in the Middle East. Ten miles north of that pass, Nazareth is perched on a plateau that overlooks  the Jezreel Valley and its constant flow of traffic. Jesus grew up in Nazareth. Well off the beaten path, the people of Nazareth did not mingle with the Gentile travelers or military forces in the valley. When Jesus preached his first sermon in Nazareth, he intentionally used the widow of  Zarephath and Naaman the Assyrian commander as examples of people with faith, clearly implying that there was no faith among the Jewish people. Furious, people who had known Jesus for most of his life, threatened to throw him off a cliff. The overlook in this video is the traditional location of where the incident happened. Jesus voluntarily left the town, never to  return. Almost certainly, he simply walked into the valley where the world was passing by. He  spent his entire ministry teaching and healing Jews and Gentiles alike. In time, he sent his  disciples to “the ends of the earth.” Ironically, even before Jesus gave his “Great Commission,” travelers who heard what Jesus was doing were already taking their stories to three different continents. By the time Paul and others arrived in Gentile communities far away from Israel,  many had already heard at least something about Jesus.