Nigeria Christian Pilgrims who arrived the state of Israel on Wednesday for the 2017 pilgrimage exercise will on Thursday begin visit to holy sites starting from Bethlehem to Nazareth and Jerusalem.
The pilgrims who are coordinated by the Nigeria Christian Pilgrims Commission (NCPC) are drawn from the federal capital territory (FCT) Abuja, Akwa Ibom and Kogi, which formed part of it October – December Holy Christian Winter 2017 batch.
According to a tour guide time table obtained by our correspondent, pilgrims will on Thursday be guided through the various holy sites by Tailor Made Tour Ltd, where they will be driven to the top of Mount of Olives, from which Jesus ascended to heaven after His resurrection. Pilgrims will visit the holy shrines on the Mount (chapel of Ascension and Peter Noster Church) and walk on down the “Palm Sunday Road” visiting the Chapel of Flevit (Jesus wept) enrout to the Garden of Gethsemane and the Church of all Nations where Christ prayed on the night of His betrayal in Jerusalem.
Other sites to be visited include Ein Karem, where John the Baptist was born. In Bethlehem they will visit Basilica of the Nativity, where there will be opportunity for the pilgrims to kneel at the birth place of Jesus Christ in the Grotto of the Nativity. Also to be visited in Bethlehem is the Field of the Shepherds, where the Angel of the Lord proclaimed the birth of the Messiah, the Saviour of the world.
The pilgrims will on Saturday be driven back to Mt Zion in Jerusalem to visit the Upper Room and the Church of St Peter in Gallicantu. It will end the day with visit to the Garden Tomb and Gordon’s Golgotha, Tel Aviv and the adjacent Joppa to see the local basilica built on the location of Simon the Tanner’s house where the impure animals vision took place.
On Sunday, the guide shows that pilgrims will the Mt of Beatitudes, Tabgha to see the Church of Multiplication of the loafs and five fishes. It will also visit the Chapel of Primacy, continue to boat trip across the Sea of Galilee.
The visit to the holy site which will end on Wednesday will see pilgrims visiting the Old City of a Jerusalem and walk in the footsteps of the Jesus as He bore the sin of humanity to the Cross at Golgotha. They will also visit Pools of Bethesda, where Jesus healed the man who had been crippled for 38 years (John 5:1-9). The tour will also take pilgrims to Via Dolorosa 14 stations of the Cross from Pilate’s Judgement Hall to the empty tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and climax with visit to the Western Wall (Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem.
