Continuing the Palm Sunday procession into the walls city of Jerusalem, Jesus rode through a gate that was designated for the Messiah. The Jewish faith is still waiting for the Messiah to come through this "Golden Gate".  Even though it has been sealed for centuries,  the Messiah will come through it. The gate is still visible from the Kidron Valley (the valleyJesus walked through for the Last Supper, etc) and the  Mount of Olives. This now sealed gate may be the beautiful gate of Acts 3?  The story of  Peter and John healing a man lame since birth—Peter preaches repentance—He also speaks of the age of restoration preceding the Second Coming—He identifies Christ as the prophet of whom Moses spoke.

Legend has it that it will be opened for the solemn procession of the new Jewish Messiah. To prevent this the Muslims have put their graves in front of the gate to prevent his coming since he would be rendered unclean by passing over the corpses.  The messiah would never do anything  that would be considered unclean.  So the Jewish faith got around this.  The rabbis declared that it is only walking over the corpses of Jews that would defile him. Interesting how we can still reconcile everything to meet our own needs. Today was also the first time that I saw Jewish burials take place. If the people there were religious and it looked like most were.  Then had to have a ritual  bath to cleanse them so that they could proceed with their lives. Isn't great that we just have to have one ritual bath, that's the great sacrament of baptism.  Let's hope that we can always keep the Spirit of the Commandments in our lives.

Below is a picture of the Golden Gate (the two arches in the wall) and also the Dome of the Rock to the left (the Moslem shrine that contains the rock where Abraham took Isaac to sacrifice him to God and where Mohammed went to heaven and also the site of the Jewish Temple (at the time of Christ).

The bottom photo is the cemetery on the Mount of Olives. Almost all the hill is in  grave sites