2000-year-old tree bears fruit—for the first time!

Remember this story?

Well, Methuselah's story isn't over!

According to this February 27, article from Behold Israel, Methuselah, who was in fact a 'male' tree and cannot produce fruit. However, 6 more seeds were painstakingly revived and were given the names Adam, Jonah, Uriel, Boaz, Judith, and Hannah. Then, Methuselah was used to cross-germinate Hannah, and the result was...

111 dates!

Which means, that these dates are as close as we can get to tasting what a 1st century person did when eating from a date palm. It's still different because of so many factors, like soil quality, air quality, etc. But still, can you imagine? This is what Jesus and the disciples would have tasted in the desert.

WOW! 

The stories that seed could tell...

The Secret of the Date Palm

As we headed south towards the Dead Sea, we saw many groves for date palms along the road—miles and miles of orderly lines of beautiful, stately palm trees growing... in the desert.

My tour guide explained to us two very interesting things: 1st - about the process of drip irrigation and 2nd, a really interesting phenomenon that was discovered upon the date palms growing in the region of the Dead Sea. It turns out that the salt in the ground actually make the fruit sweeter.

Needless to say, I've added a little bit of salt to my fruits and vegetables ever since. 

Unless a seed falls to the ground...

"Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." John 12:14

When the Romans raided and destroyed the Zealot fort, Masada, near the Dead Sea in the first century, they discovered full cisterns and storage rooms full of food (read the story here).

When those remains were discovered in the 20th century, archeologists recovered fossilized remains of wheat, as well as some dried date pits.

Someone decided to test these 2000-year-old date pit and in 2005, planted one... and in today, it is still growing! 

Methusaelah is now 12-years-old and researchers pollenated him with a female plant—and made dates. 

Gives new meaning to Jesus' words in John 12, huh? We can hold on to our pain and our rights and our dreams and desires, gritting our teeth and standing our ground. And we can hold out for a while. Maybe even a long time. But the power of life—the power of resurrection—comes from being willing to trust God, accept His gift, and die.