Photographer Paul Bernard captured the not-so-private prayer time at the Western Wall!

 

Christine Darg

By Christine Darg

Jerusalem Channel

Princess Diana once told a friend, “I wish somebody would teach my boys to pray.”

Prince William was, in fact, the first UK royal to pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall while much of the whole world watching.
RIP, Diana, God’s hand is on your boy!
From the photo above, it looks like the whole world watched Prince William pray. “Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee.” (Psalm 122: 6)
“May the God of peace bless this region and all the world with peace,”
the Duke wrote in the Western Wall guestbook at the end of his visit, which was livestreamed on the Western Wall’s official Facebook page. He was accompanied by British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and mobs of well-wishers.
Many of us intercessors have prayed a long time for an official royal visit from the UK to Israel.
Especially precious to me were the photos of Prince William’s visit to the Mt. of Olives and to the grave of Princess Alice, his great grandmother, who was the mother-in-law of Her Majesty the Queen, and the mother of William’s paternal grandfather, Prince Philip.

Image Source: Kensington Palace tweet

Princess Alice is honoured at Israel’s Holocaust Museum as a “Righteous Gentile” for hiding Jews, a Cohen family, in Greece during WW2. It was extremely providential that Princess Alice specified that she wished to be buried on the Mt. of Olives, for that prophetic request gives the heirs to the British throne an indelible reminder and connection to the Land of the Bible. When visiting the grave of his great grandmother in the Church of Mary Magdalene on the Mt. of Olives, William was accompanied by Orthodox Christians. Princess Alice had also distinguished herself by founding a nursing order of Greek Orthodox nuns.

Princess Alice died at Buckingham Palace on 5 December 1969. She left no possessions, having given everything away. Initially, she was buried in the Royal Crypt in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, but before she died, she had expressed a desire to be buried at the Convent of Saint Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem (near her aunt Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, a Russian Orthodox saint). When her daughter, Princess George of Hanover, complained that it would be too far away for them to visit her grave, Princess Andrew jested, “Nonsense, there’s a perfectly good bus service!” Her wish was realized on 3 August 1988 when her remains were transferred to her final resting place in a crypt below the church.

Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Gethsemane, Mt. of Olives


On 31 October 1994 Princess Andrew’s two surviving children, the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess George of Hanover, visited Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial) on an unofficial trip to Jerusalem to witness a ceremony honouring her as “Righteous Among the Nations” for having hidden the Cohens in her house in Athens during the Second World War.
Our Exploits Ministry and the Jerusalem Channel are honoured to be the guardian of the tree of Princess Alice in the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem.
Prince Philip said of his mother’s sheltering of persecuted Jews,
“I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special. She was a person with a deep religious faith, and she would have considered it to be a perfectly natural human reaction to fellow beings in distress.”

Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark by Philip de László, 1922. Private collection of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

In 2010, Princess Alice was posthumously named a Hero of the Holocaust by the British Government.

A lot of evangelicals who understand Bible prophecy were not happy about Prince William’s foreign office briefings and some issues concerning his itinerary, but I say he needed to put his feet in all of those places, to absorb everything, to listen, to learn first-hand, and then he can decide for himself which narrative to believe. He did amazingly well on a journey that no British royal has dared to take and that could have daunted the most seasoned politician. 
When a person visits the Holy Land for the first time, it blows you away. You need to absorb and learn, listen to the people and listen to the Lord. You can never be the same because the tangible Presence of God in His Land can take a person by surprise.

We pray for William’s royal journey to be a deeply profound and life-transforming experience for him personally. I don’t think he will be the same after this trip! May the God of Israel bless him and connect him deeply with the true Prince of Peace.

HRH Prince William Lays a Wreath at Holocaust Memorial (Photo by Paul Bernard)