I believe that the
lost Ark of the Covenant will soon reappear, creating a bond in Israel
again to their ancient roots and the temple will be rebuilt. My reasoning comes
from the fact that the Ark of the Covenant isn’t mentioned at all in
2 Kings 25, where detailed descriptions of what was taken from the temple
by the Babylonians are listed. After this point in scripture, the Ark is not
present.
I believe the reason for this is that the priests hid the Ark and some of the
temple instruments in the complex cave system under Mount Moriah. This was
around 600BC. The reason this is important has to do with who I believe DID find
the Ark of the Covenant already, Ron Wyatt. You can read his account at
WyattMuseum.com
Ron is dead now, but according to him, in a dig he and an Arab he hired were
going through the tunnels. He said that the Arab went into a small room and
after a second scrambled out of there like he’d seen a ghost. Ron never saw him
again. When Ron went in the room, he said he was pressed to the floor. He claims
that he was told it was not time yet for the Ark to be uncovered. However, he
said he saw the Ark in a stone case with the top broken.
What’s fascinating about the story of his discovery comes before he discovered
the Ark. He believes he found the crucifixion site of Christ. He found square
cuts in the stone just under a back wall. (Over time this whole area has been
filled in with debris, which is why they were digging.) There were notches cut
out of the back for posting crimes of those being crucified. This was on the
road to Jerusalem and right by Golgotha and just around the corner from the
garden tomb. This fits perfectly the description of the crucifixion site from
scripture.
John 19:41
Now in the place where He was
crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had
yet been laid.
John 19:20
Therefore many of the Jews read this inscription, for
the place where Jesus was crucified
was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin and in Greek.
Hebrews 13:12
Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own
blood, suffered outside the gate.
John 19:17
They took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the
place called the Place of a Skull,
which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha.
Matthew 27:33
And when they came to a place
called Golgotha, which means Place of a Skull,
Mark 15:22
Then they brought Him to the place
Golgotha, which is translated, Place of a Skull.
Golgotha and the garden
tomb are right next to each other on the road going into Jerusalem. (Damascus
gate) Crucifixion was a deterrent punishment. By crucifying on the roads coming
into towns with crimes posted for each criminal, it made clear that those crimes
weren’t tolerated. That’s why I don’t believe Christ was crucified on a hilltop.
So back to Ron Wyatt, he found the cutouts and the slots on the rock behind the
crucifixion site. There was also a large crack in the rock behind him.
Matthew 27:51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to
the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
What Ron found was that
the Ark of the Covenant hidden in 600 BC, over half a millennium earlier
happened to be hidden directly under the future crucifixion site.
When the rocks were
rent, the blood of Christ flowed down the crack and landed on the mercy seat of
the Ark of the Covenant. Hear Ron Wyatt’s testimony on the testing of the blood he claims to have found
there.
Wikipedia: “The High Priest was allowed in the Holy of Holies once a year
at Yom Kippur. On that day, he placed the blood of a bullock and of
a goat upon the mercy seat as an atonement or sin-offering for the
sins of the people of Israel. This ceremony renewed the closeness of
the Jewish people with their God and served to remind them of his
holiness.”
God sprinkled His Son’s blood on the mercy
seat of the Ark of the Covenant as the last sacrifice!
There are other theories as to its location, one being in a
storeroom in the Harare Museum of Human Science in Zimbabwe. This
theory is put forth by professor Tudor Parfitt.
Like another famous swashbuckling treasure
hunter, he has a fear of snakes. And he’s not averse to associating
with mystics, charlatans and crooks in his quest for prized
artifacts. But unlike his fictional alter-ego, the “British Indiana
Jones” claims he’s discovered the genuine Ark of the Covenant — or
at least a direct descendant of the vessel constructed to hold the
original tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments. In a newly
released book, University of London professor Tudor Parfitt claims
to have located the treasured artifact on a dusty shelf of an
out-of-the-way museum in Harare, Zimbabwe.
“It was just by chance that I finally managed to track it
down to a storeroom in Harare, was able to analyze it and
discover that, quite apart from anything else, it’s quite
probably the oldest wooden object in sub-Sahara Africa,” said Parfitt,
an expert in Oriental and African studies. “It’s massively
important in terms of history, even apart from its status as the
last surviving link to the original Ark of Moses.”
In his book The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500
Year Old Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark, Parfitt describes
traipsing around the globe, decoding ancient texts and deciphering
numerous clues to locate the enigmatic object. Along the way, the
man dubbed the “British Indiana Jones” by friends, colleagues and
the Wall Street Journal uncovered genetic evidence confirming claims
by the Lemba tribe that its members are descendants of ancient
Israelite priests, the lost Ark’s caretakers. Among a host of
similarities with the Israelites, the Lemba priests have been the
guardians of the ngoma lungundu, a sacred but unassuming wooden drum
they say came from the great temple in Jerusalem.
Based on radiocarbon testing dating it to A.D. 1350, Parfitt
believes a replacement was constructed from a piece of the original
ngoma, which legend says destroyed itself or was destroyed in a
pyrotechnic explosion. But some Bible scholars, archaeologists and
Ark experts are skeptical of Parfitt’s claims and even of the Ark’s
existence. Others say the ngoma could be one of multiple replicas
constructed in ancient times. Still others say the description of
the drum is a far cry from the gold-covered Ark of the Covenant
described in Exodus, complete with its golden cherubim.
J. Edward Wright, a professor of Hebrew Bible and early Judaism
at the University of Arizona, conceded it’s possible the Babylonians
stripped the gold from the Ark after invading Jerusalem in 586 B.C.
The Ark is believed to have disappeared from the temple in Jerusalem
around that time. In the ensuing 2,500 years, many treasure seekers
have risked their lives and fortunes trying to locate it. And many
claims have been made about the location of arguably the most
important religious artifact in history.
“The most dominant theory has to do with the St. Mary of Zion
Church in Aksum, Ethiopia,” said Beatrice Lawrence, an instructor at
Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.
“The theories abound, but there is no evidence to support any theory
over the other.” Grant R. Jeffrey, author of The New Temple and
the Second Coming and 24 other books, said Jewish writings and
the Ethiopian Royal Chronicles indicate a replica of the Ark was
made before the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. The original, they
say, was hidden in Ethiopia until 1991, when it was transported to
Israel.
The Temple Institute, a group of orthodox rabbis in Jerusalem
dedicated to rebuilding the temple, claim the Ark is safely stored
in a hidden chamber under the Temple Mount complex, according to the
institute’s Web site. Meanwhile, the Sanhedrin Court, the only
religious body authorized to determine the temple’s correct
location, reconvened in 2005. And renowned biblical archaeologist Vendyl Jones, who claims to be the inspiration for the fictional
Indiana Jones, is trying to raise $88,000 to return to Qumran to
remove 40 stones blocking entrance to an inner cave where he
believes the Ark and other temple treasures are located.
If the Ark is found and authenticated, biblical scholars say, it
would be one of the most important archaeological discoveries in
history. “I suppose if they found it, it would be on par with
something like the discovery of the treasures of King Tut,” said
William M. Schniedewind, a professor of biblical studies and
northwest Semitic languages at the University of California, Los
Angeles.
Parfitt, whose work tracking down the lost tribes of Israel has
been featured on “60 Minutes” and the BBC, began to suspect the Lemba tribe possessed the Ark after attending a tribal ceremony in
1987. At the time, tribal leaders told him about the ngoma, which
they said was guarded by the white lions of God and a two-headed
snake inside a nearby mountain cave. Over the next two decades,
Parfitt traveled from Israel to Egypt, Ethiopia and the ruins of
Great Zimbabwe in search of the ngoma and its secrets. He
encountered a cannibalistic tribe in Papua New Guinea, was ambushed
and shot at in Africa and narrowly escaped being kidnapped by
Islamic outlaws in Yemen. He experienced a major breakthrough in
1999 when he took DNA samples from 136 male members of the Lemba
tribe. In a finding that drew worldwide publicity, a genetic
analysis confirmed they were descendents of Aaron, the brother of
Moses.
In 2001, Parfitt returned to the Dumghe Mountain cave, but he
didn’t find the ngoma. He was later told the ngoma had been moved,
and he kept searching. Finally, based on a tip about the transport
of artifacts in war-ravaged areas and using a photo of the ngoma
taken in the 1940s by a missionary scholar, Parfitt located the
sacred object in a storeroom in the Harare Museum of Human Science
in Zimbabwe. The wooden drum had a blackened hole in the bottom and
the shattered remnants of wooden rings on each corner. Parfitt also
noticed a carved, interlaced pattern described in the biblical Book
of Exodus. While the ngoma still is stored at the museum in Harare,
Parfitt is concerned the highly valuable artifact once again may
disappear in a nation plagued by violence and corruption.
Parfitt, who was inspired to search for the Ark by a friend,
hopes the discovery will bring peace. “My friend Reuven is a very
peaceful man and something of a mystic and visionary,” Parfitt said.
“His whole excitement about the Ark was based on the idea that
the Quran talks about it as being in some way a symbol of legitimacy
for Israel. He was always convinced before his death if it was ever
found that somehow the Ark might pave the way for peace in the
Middle East.”
This last quote from the article caught my attention because I do
believe the Ark of the Covenant will one day re-emerge and it could
end up bringing about a temporary peace in the Middle East. Time
will tell.
And with the recent examinations of the Copper Scroll, found in
the area of the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is the possibility that its
hiding place, which Ron Wyatt claimed to have found, will be
revealed in the future. Watch
The
Mystery of the Copper Scroll
Be not overcome
of evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21
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