We must now answer some questions about worship.

  • How important is the place where ‘worship’ is taking place?
  • Are some places ‘more’ anointed than others?
  • What is the significance of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land?

One of the ministers on my Facebook friend list, Rev. Bolaji Akinyemi made a post. I didn’t see it until someone called my attention to it. In that post, he implied that making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem doesn’t add any meaning to your Christianity. The person who called my attention to that post disagreed. He told me that since Jerusalem is the ‘holy land,’ and ‘the ground on which Jesus Himself walked,’ the atmosphere there is pregnant with God’s presence.

Now, that would be funny if not for it tragic potential it portends. Let me quickly show you why this idea is dangerous.

Remember Moses before he became the Lawgiver of Israel. He once got busy rearing his father-in-law’s many sheep. Then he saw a shrub that was on fire. He later noticed, after hours of burning perhaps, that the shrub that was on fire wasn’t consumed. It was a strange sight and he decided to turn and see it properly.

Then he heard the voice of God. “Moses, remove your sandals. You are standing on holy ground!”

Then Jehovah engaged Moses for hours, and that reluctant prophet made it a difficult discussion. When he later agreed, he took his staff, wore his sandals and left. (Read the whole story in Exodus 3)

Moses left that ‘holy ground.’ Today, we don’t know the exact spot, and that’s just as well. Or people would be trooping there now to meet ‘The God of the Burning Bush.’

Let’s understand this: the place was holy because God was there. When he left that place, it was just a ground covered with sheep poop.

(It is in the same vein that Believers are called saints, or Holy People. The presence of God in us is the identifier, not our body or our works).

Joshua had the same experience beside the river Jordan close to Jericho.

And now Jesus. You see, we don’t know Jesus according to the flesh anymore. Being the blood brother of Jesus confers no special status on you. Even the mother of Jesus had to receive Him as her Lord and savior.

My dear friend, Mama J (Jerusha Myers) is a Jew. She is a Christian, and she keeps speaking against the erroneous idea that Jews don’t have to be born again just because they are Jews.

Today, a church is built on the site where the tomb of Jesus supposedly stood. It is called the church of the Holy Sepulcher. People travel all over the world to visit and pray there. As blasphemous as it may sound to some people, the truth is, Jesus is no more there than He is in any other place. There’s absolutely no power in the empty tomb, or the pieces of the cross, or the Garden of Gethsemane. Your prayer isn’t going to be answered faster in those places.

If God doesn’t answer your prayer in your room, he won’t answer it in the Garden of Gethsemane, or on Mount Moriah, or in the ‘Holy Manger.’

The water in the River Jordan is not clean. Those selling that dirty water to you are scamming you. And to those who drink it because Jesus was baptized there over 2000 years ago, know that it has no power, but can make you sick. The baptism you performed in the River Jordan is not more authentic than the one one in the bathtub of a hotel room.

The Crusades were the wars fought by ‘Christian Europe’ against Muslims to recover the Holy Sepulcher and other ‘Holy’ places from Muslims. Hundreds of thousands died, but God wasn’t in it.

You know Mohamed commanded his followers to go to Mecca, the Muslim Holy Land, once in their lifetime as a religious obligation to fulfill one of the five pillars of Islam. He inherited that concept, like he did many other things, from the Jews who traveled yearly from wherever they were to Jerusalem to worship. True Christianity does not need pilgrimages for its validation.

The Jews and the Samaritans were religious mortal enemies. Mount Gerizim was the Holy Mount of the Samaritans and it was adopted to rival Mount Zion in Israel. Jesus met a pesky woman at the well of Jacob and she spoke condescendingly to Jesus just because he was a Jew. After being impressed a bit by Jesus, she asked, “Where should God be worshiped? Our ancestors said it is on our own mountain. Your ancestors said it is on your own mountain. Tell me the true answer.”

It was clear that in spite of the weakness this woman had for men (she’d lived with six already), she actually wanted to serve God in the right way and in the right place.

Jesus told the woman in essence. “Your mountain, their mountain, neither is the right mountain, and neither is the wrong mountain.”

Jesus said further, “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.” (John 4:23)

It isn’t about the physical location. If someone told you there is one ‘holy ground’ in their church, or one holy mountain somewhere, or one anointed river in a certain place, be wary of such claims. A God you can’t worship until you get to a certain place or perform certain rituals is a limited one indeed.

And does this mean we have to stop going to church? The wise knows that is not what I am saying. Every believer understands that our faith is not complete and our commitment to God is deficient until we value meeting (Hebrews 10:25).

What I am saying here is that it is all too easy to fall into ‘placiolatry,’ the sin of place worship. (That’s a word I made up, so don’t bother to look it up). I have seen professing believers attributing the answer to their prayers to the tomb of a sainted dead man, or a well dug by their church, or a mountain somewhere. Those places and things quickly take the place of God in their life.

I encourage you to go to Jerusalem if you are able, and learn about our historical heritage. I also enourage you to go to the mountain to pray if that will make you concentrate more. I do not want you to go to those places because you think there is more of God there than elsewhere, because that is simply not true.

The just must live by faith, (Romans 1:17), but that faith is the ‘faith of the son of God.’ (Galatians 2:20). It is not faith in a place or a thing, no matter how anointed it is supposed to be.

Do you have any thoughts on this? Please share them in the comment section below.