The World Training Institute

The World Training Institute is a 501 c 3 not-for-profit organization, a network of volunteers, who are experts in diverse fields such as auditing, finance, electronics, training, and security. The Directors provide consulting and accounting management expertise for select clients such as the Orthodox Palestine Society.

Through the World Training Institute, a network of forensic auditors, partners from select educational institutions have access to the most significant educational and cultural resource in the world.

These are perilous times for historical landmarks throughout the world. Each year precious monuments of ‘living history’ fall victim to deterioration and decline, often due to lack of funds to maintain and repair them. The Holy Land is no exception. The most sacred spaces in our world are those walked upon by Christ in his last hours of agony and triumph. These sacred spaces are maintained by a host of religious organizations, among which is the Orthodox Palestine Society, and these sacred spaces are at risk unless people of faith act now.

For years, these sacred spaces were maintained by donations of pilgrims visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Now the latest threat is time and the weather. The Church roof leaks, and Jerusalem winters take their toll on the ancient buildings. The Church is closed except for caretakers. Churches and other properties in Israel managed by the Orthodox Palestine Society are deteriorating. Funds required to maintain and keep these shrines open to pilgrims disappeared with the increased violence of recent years in Israel.

Partners of the World Training Institute and the Orthodox Palestine Society will have access to areas of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Garden of Gethsemane, The Church of St. Mary Magdalene, nine acres of land on Mount of Olives, and select properties throughout Palestine and Israel.

Our other goal is to make these sacred spaces available to the largest number of people who would find the benefits derived from a pilgrimage here well worth any challenges that discourage the faint of heart — and faith.

The directors of the World Training Institute seek select partners — modern-day pilgrims — who will cooperate with us to make available this space for research, study and meditation. Physical space will to be made available for any educational institutions seeking a presence in Jerusalem for their religious, cultural, or archaeological study programs.

For students and faculty members, we provide facilities and space for development — classrooms, offices, conference space, all will be made available to our select partners. We seek partners who understand that the educational and cultural benefits deriving from access to the real and virtual space of the burial place of Jesus Christ are unique and priceless.

Much of the following background appears in the official brochure describing the work of the Orthodox Palestine Society. The site named "Russian Excavations" has as its origin the archeological excavations carried out in 1883 by Archimandrite Antonin Kapoustin, who was Chief of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, and also a talented amateur archaeologist. The results of his activities in that area can be viewed today in the headquarters building of the Orthodox Palestine Society on 25 DeBaggha Street, Jerusalem, built in 1891.

This Society, which continues even today its activities in the Holy Land, France and the USA, is a lay organization founded to assist faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Holy Land. Its original purpose was to acquire property and archaeological sites connected with Biblical or Christian tradition, and to administer schools, orphanages, hostels for pilgrims, etc. We are extending that mission.

After the property in Jerusalem, on which was later built the compound of buildings, was acquired by the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in 1859, some superficial excavations were carried out by such well known archaeologists as Clermont-Ganneau, Schick, Vincent, and others. These archaeological ruins consist of the following main elements: 1. Remnants of Judgment Gate built in the 1st century B.C. by King Herod. 2. Remnants of an arch and two columns, built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the beginning of the 2nd century A.D. 3. Remnants of the Basilica built by the Byzantine queen St. Helena at the beginning of the 4th century. 4. Remnants of a cloister of the Chanoines, (a holy order of monks who were servants at the Holy Sepulchre during the time of the Crusaders). 5. The Eye of the Needle.

At the time of the Judean Kings of the House of David, on the place where today there is an arch, stood the City Wall built by Nehemiah. Close to that area in the City Wall was a gate called the Gate of Ephraim. To the east of the wall, there was and still is a market place. In order to go out of the city in that place, one had to go through what used to be called the "Judgment Gate" (whose threshold is now the property of the Orthodox Palestine Society and is kept under glass at the Russian Excavations).

Having passed through the Judgment Gate, one had to cross the yard of the fort, walk through the tower at the Gate of Ephraim, and only then would one be outside the City Walls. The Romans, who at the time of Christ, were the rulers in the Holy Land, had the following custom. In Rome, when persons sentenced to death were taken to be executed, they were led through the Esquiline Gate, their names and crimes publicly announced by criers. This was done in order to give those about to die a last chance to be cleared of the accusations. Anyone not present at the trial yet aware of mitigating circumstances regarding the case could protest the death sentence. The prisoner’s escort were then bound by law to return him to the procurator for a new trial. This Roman concept of justice gave a person sentenced to death some fair chance for a retrial.

The Romans, eager whenever possible to avoid a miscarriage of justice, introduced this custom into all parts of their vast empire. In Jerusalem, those sentenced to death were taken to the place of execution through the Judgment Gate, where anyone had the right to object if he knew of a reason why the sentence should not be carried out. There is little doubt that Christ was taken to Golgotha through this Gate.

The stone threshold of the Judgment Gate remains well preserved. The grooves scooped out in the extremities of the long stone, where the pivots of both wings of the Gate turned, are clearly seen. So too are the grooves in the middle of the stone, where bolts were pushed in when the Gate was locked.

The Threshold of the Judgment Gate had remained for centuries buried and forgotten under layers of dirt and ruins until discovered in the middle of the 19th century. At the place between the site of the Russian Excavations and the present day Church of the Holy Sepulchre stood a cloister built by the Crusaders called the Cloister of the Chanoines. Remnants of the refectory of that cloister are still seen in the chapel of a Russian saint, Saint Alexander Nevsky, built in 1896 on the site of the Russian Excavations. One of the main purposes of this building was to create a memorial to the late Russian Emperor Alexander the Third, founder of the Orthodox Palestine Society, who was named in honor of the Grand Prince St. Alexander Nevsky.

Properties of the Orthodox Palestine Society

Bishop Anthony Grabbe was a former Count and a descendant of General Count Alexander Grabbe. After many years as Archimandrite of Jerusalem at St. Mary Magdalene Church on the Mount of Olives in the Garden of Gethsemane, Bishop Anthony Grabbe, recently deceased, was head of the Orthodox Palestine Society.

The Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, set against a vivid blue sky in the image below, contain the holy relics of both the Holy Royal Martyr Passion Bearer Grand Duchess Elizabeth and St. Barbara. The church of Saint Mary Magdalene, situated on the slope of the Mount of Olives in the Garden of Gethsemane, is one of the most easily recognizable landmarks of Jerusalem. The church of Saint Mary Magdalene also requires funding for maintenance of its exterior, as evident by the scaffolding shown.

. . . . Inside the Basilica itself, a staircase leads to a well preserved underground church known as the Temple of Saint Helena. This Church is an integral part of the present-day Holy Sepulchre Church and is situated outside the ancient City Wall. From there it is possible to reach a small chapel even further below, called the Chapel of the Finding of the Cross, situated at a distance of less than 8 meters (26.2 ft.) from the Russian Excavations.

GOLDEN GATE

The Golden Gate is situated on the eastern wall of the Temple Mount. It is also sometimes called the Gate of Mercy perhaps due to the custom of a person being able to enter the Temple and be free of their pursuers.

Many people of the Jewish faith believe that the Messiah one day will come from the eastern pass over the Mount of Olives, (on the left) and through the Kidron Valley before arriving at the Temple Mount. This has influenced burial patterns. For centuries Jews have buried their dead in the Kidron Valley on the Mount of Olives.

The church stands in the Garden of Gethsemane. Also found on the convent grounds are the remnants of a pre-Roman road and the biblical-era entry to Jerusalem.

To the right top is the Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, and at this Church Convent are the holy relics of both the Holy Royal Martyr Passion Bearer Grand Duchess Elizabeth and St. Barbara. This striking example of Russian architecture was built in the Muscovite style with golden onion domes or Cupolas as a memorial to Empress Maria Alexandrovna by her son the Russian Tsar Alexander III.

Grand-Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, brother of Alexander III, and his wife Grand-Duchess Elizabeth (formerly Princess Elizabeth of Hesse-Darmstadt), grand-daughter of Queen Victoria and sister of the last Empress of Russia presided at the consecration of the church of Saint Mary Magdalene in 1888 as representatives of the Emperor. Grand-Duchess Elizabeth, widowed by an assassin's bomb in 1905, became a nun and founded the convent dedicated to nursing and charitable work in Moscow, Russia. After the revolution, in 1918, the Grand-Duchess, together with her companion Sister Barbara and several members of the Russian Imperial Family, were thrown into a mine shaft by the Bolsheviks and left to die. Her remains and those of Sister Barbara eventually were brought to Jerusalem. In 1920, they were laid to rest, as the Grand-Duchess wished, in a crypt below the Saint Mary Magdalene Church. They were canonized as Martyr Saints in 1981 and their relics were moved into the main section of the church where they rest today in marble sarcophagi (to the left in the main Church). Even today, the fate of the Romanov family members remains controversial. Recent DNA analyses suggest that samples taken from alleged remains of the Romanov family in Russia do not match the DNA sample from Grand-Duchess Elizabeth.

The Third Temple of Solomon

Yet another possibility for the Mount Olives property lies in its purported use as a site for a proposed Third Temple of Solomon. The location of the first Temple of Solomon, south of the Dome of the Rock, now makes it impossible to rebuild the Temple without destroying the Dome of the Rock or the El Aksa Mosque. Today, any presumed alternative location such as between the Al Aksa Mosque and the El Kas fountain would prove controversial.

However, the Mount Olives site is situated within an ellipse that, arguably, preserves the ritual significance of the Temple as center of the spiritual world. For more details on the history of the Temple of Solomon, see Tuvia Sagiv and the Proposed Third Temple Location.