Saturday, May 31, 2008

Where Is The Ark of God?

Indiana Jones made a movie about it once... where is the Ark of God?

I was watching Digging For The Truth on the History Channel once, and they had an episode of where the ark might be. One of the plausible sounding guesses was that it was in Ethiopia. Some people think that somehow it got over there because King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba had a relationship of some sort... or so some believe.

The Ethiopian theory is based on the belief that the last known reference to the ark in the Bible was from King Solomon's day.

I guess whoever came up with that little bit of research failed to read the entire Bible.

While I was reading II Chronicles 35 today, I ran into verse 3: "Then he said to the Levites who taught all Israel, who were holy to the Lord: "Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David, king of Israel, built. It shall no longer be a burden on your shoulders. Now serve the Lord your God and His people Israel."

So evidently, the location of the ark was known in King Josiah's day, and he sent it to one of the houses which Solomon built. I would guess he would put it in a house in Judah? And not in Ethiopia, even if Solomon built a house there. Josiah followed the Lord, and I would find it hard to believe that Josiah would send something that important away from his country during his lifetime. He also had no reason to believe that the ark would have been taken by enemies.

He died fairly suddenly in battle.

His sons did evil in the sight of the Lord. One of them was carted away to Egypt, Nebudchadnezzar carried away another king and also took some of the articles from the house of the Lord to Babylon.

II Chronicles 36:18 says that all the articles of the house of God, great and small, ended up being carried away to Babylon.

Perhaps somebody had foresight in the days of the final evil kings, and hid the ark away... or perhaps the ark ended up going to Babylon. But the Bible says one thing: it didn't leave Israel in the time of Solomon.

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