There is a town at the top of the Holy Land with a name like a boy’s—Dan. Down at the bottom of the Holy Land is another town called Beersheba; so people often say “from Dan to Beersheba,” meaningfrom top to bottom or from one end of something to the other. Between these two towns the distance is only one hundred and fifty miles and the distance across Palestine is only about fifty miles, sothat it would be possible now in one day to go in an automobile up and down and across Palestine.
There are two lakes in Palestine; one is in the north and one is in the south, but both are called Seas. The one in the north is called the Sea of Galilee. The one in the south is known as the Dead Sea, for nothing can live in it nor grow around it.
The Sea of Galilee is where Christ walked on the water and where the miraculous number of fish werecaught. Many of Christ’s close friends were fishermen, and He asked them to help Him teach others, saying He would make them “fishers of men.” So a club of Galilee fishermen was started and they used a drawing of a fish as the sign of their society, for, strangely enough, the first two letters of the Greek word for fish were Christ’s initials. As in Bible times, they still have sudden storms on the Sea of Galilee and a great many fish are still caught there.
Running from the Sea of Galilee into the Dead Sea is a zigzag river called the Jordan. It was in the Jordan River that John the Baptist baptized Christ, and people go from all over the World to see the spot where this took place, and some to be baptized there themselves. There is always a clergyman on hand, ready and waiting, to baptize those who come.