Focus on Israel

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: I'm Laurie Cardoza-Moore, and this is Focus on Israel.

Archaeological finds continue to establish the authenticity of the ancient Jewish home. PJTN was on location just after a Herodian street dating back over 2,000 years and used by Jewish pilgrims was uncovered. The brick road was below ground level, and hundreds of thousands of Jews used it three times a year to ascend from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount.

As the Romans overtook Jerusalem in AD 70 during the first Jewish-Roman War, with the temple in flames, the last of the Jewish rebels hid in the sewers before being murdered. Hello, I'm Laurie Cardoza-Moore, founder of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and sharing the message of Christian biblical responsibility to the people and land of Israel in the face of a growing global anti-Semitism.

Proclaiming Justice to the Nations was birthed to stop the silence, to wake up Christians and people of conscience to the realities of a world bent on destroying Israel and the Jewish people. In 2019, I had a unique opportunity to take a tour of a new excavation that once again establishes Jerusalem as a Jewish city from over 2,000 years ago.

The Stepped Street, also known as Jerusalem Pilgrimage Road, is an ancient walkway connecting the Temple Mount from its southwestern corner to Jerusalem's southern gate via the Pool of Siloam. Since 2004, archaeologists in the City of David have been working to uncover this 2,000-year-old road.

The street was built at the earliest during the 30s of the common era, during the Roman period, and began with the works of Herod. After his death, it was the infamous governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, who completed the pilgrimage road. At the bottom of the road, archaeologists found the Pool of Siloam.

Built some 2,700 years ago during the reign of King Hezekiah, Jewish pilgrims used the Pool of Siloam as a mikvah for ritual purification before walking up the street to the temple. It is also the site where Jesus is said to have healed a blind man. It was considered to be one of the most important areas in Jerusalem during the First Temple period.

According to Flavius Josephus, a first-century Roman-Jewish historian, at its peak, nearly 3 million people visited Jerusalem during the main Jewish pilgrimage festivals. The Stepped Street is the road that the pilgrims walked on, Jesus walked on, and is an amazing piece of biblical history.

Eli Cleves: This is a miracle. Everything that you see here is original. We don't renovate anything.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: These are original stones?

Eli Cleves: These are original. We just cleaned them. We discovered them and cleaned them. This is what we find. You see what we find. First of all, we started down here, as you see. This tunnel is very special. It's only 2,000 years old.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: Only 2,000 years old. Thank you for clarifying.

Eli Cleves: We discovered it. I took my small son, and we found here a tunnel about 20 centimeters like this. So I told him, okay, let's come to crawl to see. And then he saw, we crawled like this because I could not crawl like him. My shoulder was too big. He saw this tunnel, he saw this is a pit. He told me, "Abba, this is a pit." I told him, "No, this is a tunnel. Jump in."

So we jumped and we started to walk to the pool. We discovered what a very famous historian 2,000 years ago described as the last fight between the Jews and the Romans. The last 2,000 Jews tried to escape from the city through this tunnel to the desert, to the Dead Sea. The Romans killed 2,000 Jews here 2,000 years ago. We found the black ash of the fire of the Romans.

We found the Roman sword, a complete Roman sword. We found a gold bell of the high priest, a Jewish high priest. We found all the fight down here. We found complete food. Clay with food from 2,000 years ago. So this is the path. This is the path up to the Temple Mount. This is from Siloam. Siloam is down here, the pool. And this is the tunnel underneath where the water would flow.

Exactly. But King Herod, he built it as an emergency exit from the city if there was a time of war. Your last way is down to escape from the city. So he planned it. They tried to escape, and the Romans killed them. For us to come back after 2,000 years and to say you thought that this is the end of Jerusalem and this is the end of Jewish life? No, we came back to continue the mission of returning to this place.

Look at this podium. Because you have to understand, here all the nation, millions of Jews on holiday, Passover, this was the main road that all the Jewish people in the world came to walk to the temple. The only place for the king or minister to talk with the people was here. He stood here. We know it from the Roman system. We discovered on the top of the podium was a tree.

We discovered a palm tree that stood here in the destruction, fell down, and we found it here. We found many, many coins dated to the year 70 AD, which is the year of the destruction. We started to dig and to discover all the road, and we started to dig toward the pool. As you see, a complete situation as it was, because the destruction kept the original road. So here we are 20 meters from the pool because we came from the pool. Now here this road goes to the pool and goes to the temple.

In two months, we want to connect. We have two groups, one group coming from the pool to us and one group from here to the pool. They're going to connect in two months. In two months, we are going to open it. I think that this will be a place where millions of tourists will come especially to walk on the original stones. So we prepare it now to millions of people. Every place that we can open it as it was in the past, open sky, we are going to open it. If not, it will be like a tunnel.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: You're getting us ready for when the new temple is built, so everybody can have the pool, the road, and the temple.

I want to take you to Israel in pictures and film. I want you to see how God's sovereign hand can be seen before our eyes right here in this land. That's why PJTN is offering a special anniversary package that includes a captivating new book and award-winning DVD. In Israel the Miracle: Encounters with the Land and People God Loves, you'll experience Israel as never before.

Through stunning photography and artwork and personal encounters with the people of Israel, you'll gain new appreciation for the land promised to Abraham and his descendants. Learn the magnificent 75-year history of the Jewish state and its drive to persevere under extreme circumstances. It's a beautiful journey with inspiring stories throughout God's land. Israel the Miracle makes a perfect gift that will be treasured for years to come.

In addition, you'll receive the award-winning documentary, Israel Indivisible: The Case for the Ancient Homeland. This inspiring film examines the many political twists and turns that make Israel the world's most controversial nation. From Abraham and the promise to the issues facing the Jewish state today, the film examines the historical, archaeological, legal, and biblical foundations for the modern state of Israel.

This is a limited-time offer for these two remarkable resources for just a one-time gift of $70 today. Your generous donation will help ensure that PJTN stays on the front lines and in the headlines of all the important issues facing Israel and our Jewish brethren. So please go to PJTN.org today.

From studying history, it's very clear that what starts with the Jews never ends only with the Jews. We must strongly stand against any anti-Semitic trends, for if not stopped, they'll cause harm to all of us, and we'll witness the downfall of our Judeo-Christian Western culture. Today many people say there's no longer a need for a Jewish state, that Jews around the world no longer need a place of refuge.

But anyone who has heard recent statistics about the worldwide rise in anti-Semitism would never make such a claim. The reality is that neo-Nazi groups and Nazi sympathizers are increasing around the world. Surveys show that over 1 billion people in the world harbor anti-Semitic attitudes. Close to 50% believe that Jews have too much power in the business world, and two-thirds of the world's population has never heard of the Holocaust or believes the historic accounts of it are inaccurate.

Don't let yourself be manipulated by evil people with a wicked agenda. When the self-serving villains are in control, good people from all religions suffer. Muslims, Christians, and all people of conscience should stand proudly and show respect for a country that gives so much to the world in so many ways. Do your part, do your research, and do what you can to make a difference because what happens in Israel does affect us all. This is not just a Jewish or just an Israeli problem. This is a problem for all humanity, for each and every one of us who believes in freedom and human rights. Learn more about what you can do at PJTN.org.

I recently returned to Jerusalem to see the progress on the exciting new excavation of the pilgrimage road. Eli Cleves explained the deeper spiritual and historical significance of Israel's return to its ancient capital and the archaeological evidence of Jewish rights to the land. We are at the southern portion of Jerusalem just south of the Temple Mount right now. These stones are identical to the stones that are directly south connected to the Temple Mount. These stones are identical, same masonry, same time period, and they realize that there's a direct connection.

Eli Cleves: These steps have to be the Pool of Siloam. Now the Pool of Siloam for those that might not know what the Pool of Siloam was, this was a place that Jews during pilgrimage, whether it was during the Tabernacle, during Passover, or during Pentecost, would come and they would cleanse themselves spiritually in this water here. This water is fed by the Gihon Spring, which is mentioned multiple times in the Bible.

The people would cleanse themselves here and they would walk up this road and they would walk into the gates here into the temple to perform temple service 2,000 years ago. So basically, this is where all of the Jews would come on pilgrimage, whether they lived near or far, and would walk up this road 2,000 years ago.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: Everybody says that this is not Israel's land, but here we have evidence, proof of structures that were here at that time where Jews would come to worship as it says in the Bible, to cleanse themselves to go up to the Temple Mount.

Eli Cleves: Exactly. Undeniable. There's the evidence right there. In the course of digging around the pool and this area and under this whole area, we found this drainage channel. In 2014, we embarked on a full excavation from the Pool of Siloam all the way to the Western Wall. It's a half-mile, 600 meters. We're very close hopefully to being done with this and hopefully soon we can open this to the public and show this to the whole world.

Right now we're standing on the pilgrimage road, the original pilgrimage road. The stones that you're standing on right now are 2,000 years old. This is the original road. There is no reconstruction here. This is as it was when it was destroyed by Rome in the year 70. Everything behind you here are remnants of the homes and shops because it was like a market here. So people lived here and people had their shops here back 2,000 years ago. So they would have shops on the way going up to the temple. And here if you look here, this is that original drain that we found.

This tunnel is all the way open and it goes all the way from the pool all the way up to the top. We need to remember we're in this massive tube here that's under the neighborhood here, but this was open to the sky in ancient times. Jerusalem is conquered and buried and built up again and conquered again, so there's a lot of layers of dirt in Jerusalem, a lot of layers of city here. At the time, this was open to the sky.

These steps here, this podium, it's a one-of-a-kind in Jerusalem. Nothing like it's ever been found in Jerusalem. It's halfway between the pool and the temple. So I guess what is it? We know from the Talmud and we also know from historical sources that this would have been most likely a lost and found. You'd lose items as you go along the way. You have to understand the spot that you're standing on right now.

If this would have been the intermediary days of Passover right now, you'd have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people walking through here. It's nice and quiet for us in here right now, but you have to picture it with the throngs of people coming through here, losing stuff. This was quite a central gathering place on the road because it's halfway. You could find stuff here and there would have certainly been someone here like a soapbox giving messages to the people that are going through. A soapbox, what a concept.

This wall here, this wall of dirt here, is what we've had to dig through for 600 meters for half a mile. So everything that you just walked through, one meter at a time, that's what we've had to go through here. Just slow going, pickaxe, and we also sift every bucket here because you never know what you're going to find. You can't just throw it away. You have to see what's going on here because it's all antiquity.

What you're looking at here, it's not just a regular wall of dirt. We know what happened on October 7th. If I were to take one of the kibbutzim that was attacked and I would bury that kibbutz and I would come back 2,000 years later and uncover the destruction, that's what this is. This is October 7th of 2,000 years ago when Rome destroyed Jerusalem. You can just see here the pottery from the neighborhood that was here at the time.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: This is pottery shards from 2,000 years ago. So we just were at a podium where basically lost and found and the town crier would have stood. But this is also a place that Jesus could have stood to preach as people were coming up this pilgrimage road. It would be the same road because he was a Jew. People want to say that he wasn't a Jew, that he was a Palestinian or he was a Christian. I've heard that as well. But here, being a Jew, he would have participated in this yearly ritual of going up these pilgrimage steps, this pilgrimage road, and going up to the Temple Mount. So important for us to understand the context.

Eli Cleves: That's the fire from the burning of Jerusalem. Notice that there's a coin there? That's a coin embedded in the road. As we go a little further down, I'll explain the story of the significance of the coin. The steps here are broken. You see that there's glass here along the road? Now we wouldn't have initially thought anything of it because as we started digging here in the beginning, the road, the stones are broken. They're old, we didn't think too much of it.

But as you start to see one and then another and another and another, you start to see that there's a story here. In order to understand the story here, you go on to the writings of Josephus Flavius of the time. He wrote a chronicle of what happened here during this time. Are you familiar with the story of Masada? So you know the story of Masada, that the Jews escaped to Masada and were put under siege by the Romans there.

But a lesser-known story is that there were about 2,000 Jews that took refuge here under us, under our feet here, while the rebellion was going on up top. They were hiding here in the hopes that things would settle down so that they could go out this way and meet up with the Jews perhaps in Masada or towards the Dead Sea in the desert there. It didn't go that way for them.

The Romans found them here and where I'm standing a Roman legionnaire would have stood with a sledgehammer to break open the road here to get at the 2,000 Jews that were hiding here under the road. Right under our feet. And that coin that I pointed out up top there is a rebel coin. The Jews rebelled against Rome in the year 66 and the Jews minted these coins during the rebellion.

It's a strange thing to do because Rome seemingly controlled the commerce at the time and if you're in open rebellion against them, why don't you use the metal to make arrowheads or swords or weaponry, things that you need to fight? What's more important than the coin is the message on the coin, and the message on the coin in Hebrew, in ancient Hebrew, is for the freedom of Zion. So that's the message of the rebels at that time fighting the Roman legionnaires. Has anything changed? I guess not. We're still fighting for Zion.

Rome obviously we know how the story ends here. Rome defeats Judea here and takes over the land. Emperor Vespasian, he mints his own coin here and it's the Roman victory coin and it says in Latin, Judaea Capta, Judea's been captured. And it's a Roman legionnaire standing over a crying Jewish woman, and that's their victory coin against us. They left something for us for future generations to tell the story, their story.

So now we're standing in the Pool of Siloam and these are the steps that would have constituted the pool. Water would have filled up in different levels here and gone all the way down. As of recently, a press release just came out on this, we found this dam wall here. This ancient wall that kind of goes in deep into the pool here. This wall was actually from the First Temple period, almost say almost 2,800 years ago, this wall here.

So this usage as a pool or as a reservoir of water for the city was already in use already in the First Temple period. And that's what this wall evidence is here. It's amazing to look at it after reading the Bible and you read about the Pool of Siloam but you think in your mind you see a pool where people would go in, they could submerge themselves and then stand back up, maybe six to eight feet deep. This isn't six to eight feet deep. No, this is bombastic, deep. It looks like it could be 20, maybe almost 30 feet deep.

This is fascinating. Historical archaeological organizations, what do they say about this dig? Because the problem with the narrative that Israel wasn't here, this is not their territory, this isn't their land, how do they reconcile with these digs like this? Because this proves that what was in the Bible, what Christians read in the New Testament about the Pool of Siloam, about the man who was healed by being dipping in the water, being submerged in the water, this is where that happened. This is actually a real part of Israel's history.

As these digs go along, it becomes more difficult to deny as time goes along. It makes the narrative much more challenging for the other side.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: As we close out today's program, I want you to know we appreciate your support. The time to take a stand is now. Be a leader in your community and in your church. One person can make a difference. Get involved with and support Pro-Israel organizations such as PJTN. Call your senators, congressmen, let your elected leaders hear from you.

Visit our website to learn more, sign up to be a PJTN watchman to receive action alerts, and order our films to share with family and friends. Please encourage everyone you know to tune in and become informed. God bless you and thank you for all you do on behalf of our Jewish brethren and all Israel. I'll see you next time on Focus on Israel.