Has 'Temple' author discovered location of lost Ark of Covenant?
Pastor Dale Morgan
Has 'Temple' author discovered location of lost Ark of Covenant?*
New best-selling prophecy book claims resting place is Mt. Nebo
Posted: August 17, 2008
A new best-selling book on the hidden mysteries of the Jerusalem Temple
Mount claims to have discovered the resting place of the lost Ark of the
Covenant – the biblical refuge of the Ten Commandments handed down to
Moses at Sinai.
In "Temple at the Center of Time: Newton's Bible Codex Deciphered and
the Year 2012," by David Flynn, a book that has skyrocketed up the
best-seller charts before its official release later this month, says
his studies of the Temple Mount strongly suggest the Ark will be found
at Mount Nebo in Jordan.
The discovery would be the greatest archeological find ever – as has
been suggested in popular movies such as "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
In "Temple at the Center of Time," Flynn makes the case that the Temple
Mount, the home of the Jewish temples, was not just a place of religious
worship. It is also is a roadmap to future events – a kind of prophetic
landmark whose significance is only now revealed through the development
of satellite imagery.
The book asserts it has "deciphered Isaac Newton’s greatest paradox:
None other than 'the unified field theory' of Bible prophecy."
Sir Isaac Newton was not only a great thinker in physics, the book
explains, but had extensive knowledge of the Scriptures with a special
interest in prophecy. Newton believed there was a hidden code, a type of
time-encrypted language. He believed the key to deciphering this code
was the Temple of Solomon. He wrote extensively on the length
measurements of the Temple and suggested it intersected time and
dimension, serving as a prophetic and supernatural structure.
According to Flynn, although Newton never cracked this code, he was on
the right track and was limited only by the lack of sophisticated
satellite technology.
"The description of Jerusalem as a terrestrial center point, situated in
the center of the world, is found in Philo's Legatio and Gaium," Flynn
notes. "The world is like a human eyeball. The white of the eye is the
ocean surrounding the world, the iris is this continent, the pupil is
Jerusalem, and the image in the pupil is the Holy Temple."
Many historians speculate that because Babylon destroyed the Temple of
Solomon, it also removed the Ark to Babylon. There it is said the Ark
was eventually destroyed along with the other artifacts from the temple,
the gold melted down and set into coins for their treasury. But the Book
of Daniel makes specific mention of the golden menorah from the temple
of Jerusalem in the palace of Belshazzar. The Babylonian king had
preserved it, a major artifact from the Jewish temple, in an attempt to
demonstrate the superiority of Babylon's gods to the God of the Hebrews.
That the menorah was set on display in this manner underscores how
unlikely the Babylonians would have been to destroy the Ark, the
greatest symbol of the God of the Hebrews.
Certain tracts of the Midot in the Jewish Talmud dealing with temple
laws, practices and rituals allude to the creation of more than one Ark,
the second made as a decoy to protect the original. They claim that
certain articles of the temple furnishing including the true Ark remain
in a secret vault underneath the temple mount in Jerusalem.
However, others discount the likelihood of the Ark being left to fate
under the Temple Mount, open to any treasure hunter with the motivation
to merely dig. It is difficult to explain how the location could remain
secret, as Jerusalem remained open for excavation and plundering for
hundreds of years after its fall to the Romans in AD 70. Motivated
treasure seekers over the ensuing centuries have had ample time to
excavate the area underneath the temple.
The recovery of temple treasure of Solomon was the highest goal of the
Knights Templar that established their center on the Temple Mount during
the crusades.
Various Judaic sects of Ethiopia believe the Ark has been guarded and
kept in the city of Axum in their country for thousands of years. The
legend claims it was brought to Axum by the son of King Solomon and the
Queen of Sheba, Prince Menelik I.
Some historians believe the Egyptians took the ark and hid it
underground in the city of Tanis, the seat of Shishak’s dynasty. The
location was lost over the course of history. That was the theory behind
the first "Indiana Jones" movie.
But all of these theories are discounted by Flynn, who points out the
Ark was a central focus of worship during the reign of King Josiah –
long after the reign of Solomon.
Meanwhile, the book of 2 Maccabees 2:4 explains that before the
destruction of Solomon’s temple by the Babylonians in 587 BC, the Ark
was hidden by the prophet Jeremiah in a cave at the base of Mount Nebo
in the Pisgah range of Jordan. Maccabees, as well as other Apocryphal
works, are retained in modern Catholic bibles as well as the Septuagint
and Vulgate.
The account of the Ark from 2 Maccabees is also mentioned in the Jewish
Talmud, in Huriot 12A and Tractate Yoma 72a. These texts explain that
the Ark's location would not be recovered until the Jews were brought
back to Israel following the Diaspora, an event that occurred in 1948.
The pseudopigraphic book 2 Baruch, written near the 1st century, repeats
the prophetic age in which the Ark would be recovered: "Oh earth ...
guard them [the temple vessels and the Ark] until the last times, So
that, when thou art ordered, thou mayst restore them, So that strangers
may not get possession of them. For the time comes when Jerusalem also
will be delivered for a time, until it is said, that it is again
restored for ever."
The legendary accounts of Jeremiah and the Ark provide a hidden clue to
its location at Mount Nebo. This is a symbolic link that exists between
the names of the Babylonian king that threatened to destroy the Ark, and
the mountain where it was hidden by Jeremiah. Both Nebuchadnezzar and
Nebo stem from the Semitic root nebu, meaning the god Mercury. This was
also intimated in the prophecies of Ezekiel condemning Jerusalem. The
name Nebuchadnezzar means "the prince of the god Mercury." The Hebrew
word nebo is from the root neba ("to prophesy" and also "a prophet"),
writes Flynn. In the same role as the prophets of the God of Israel,
Nebo was worshiped as the celestial scribe of the Assyrians, the
"interpreter of the gods, and declarer of their will."
According to the Bible, the greatest prophet of all time was Moses,
which states, "And there arose not a prophet (neba) since in Israel like
unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face." Ironically, according to
the Bible, Mount Nebo was the site of the death of Moses.
The Hebrew words nobe, meaning "high place," and nahab, meaning "to
hollow out," "gate," or "pupil of the eye," also correlate with the
location for the resting place of the ark in a "hollow cave" on Mount
Nebo, described in 2 Maccabees, says Flynn.
Mount Nebo is 25.20 nautical miles due East of Jerusalem – and Flynn
finds significance in that distance related to his study of the Temple
Mount and its mystical placement "at the center of time and space."
Before it is even officially released, "Temple at the Center of Time" is
causing a sensation in some circles where it is being compared to "The
Bible Code."