Journey Through the Bible

All right, brethren. Hope you enjoy this treat. I haven't done it this way here in Garden Grove in the 15 years that I've been here and since I've been teaching ABC at this particular field for so many years and written articles on it. I thought I'd take you on a journey back to biblical times to see some of the greatest archaeological finds and their witness to the accuracy of the scriptures. You will learn a lot about the Bible today. This should strengthen our faith, and the Bible tells us to prove all things, holding fast to what is good, 1 Thessalonians 5 21. And to give a defense of our faith, we should be ready for this. So I'm just going to be commenting on the different slides that I will present to you.

First, as a preface, Jesus said, I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out. Luke 19 40. He was speaking of what would happen if his disciples kept silent. The original disciples are not around anymore, but God's word is still with us. And curiously enough, we also have the testimony of, quote, the stones, where archaeology can bear witness to the accuracy and inspiration of the scriptures. So far, over 50 biblical personages have been confirmed, and as you will see, so many of the biblical accounts.

So let's begin in Genesis 1 and 2, the area thought to be the Garden of Eden, which is flooded when Gulf waters arose, as is shown in the green.

Two fossil rivers were found by satellite images. So you still have two of the biblical rivers that mentioned that the Garden of Eden flowed through. One is the Euphrates, the other one is the Tigris, but they have found here two rivers. They call them fossil rivers because they dried up, but sometime in the past there were four rivers, and this is what the Bible says, that they branched out. And this is the area very close to Babylon. Ur is here, and this is the Persian Gulf today. It's lowered its water level, but it used to come even higher up.

So when the Bible tells us that in this vicinity is where Adam and Eve were created, and you still have two of the main rivers in this area, yellow areas of Bahrain and the Arabian coast represent Dilmun, the paradise of the Ubaidians and Samirians. It is a cradle of civilization where most of the domesticated animals and plants appear. So this is called the cradle of civilization, and it coincides with the biblical account.

Man branched out to different parts afterwards.

Here we have a Samarian poem, which it goes back to right after the flood, and where around, it was, they think, copied. So this one in particular was around 1900 BC, but it's about an incident going back to the time of early man. It says, in those days, the people entrusted to him could address Enlil, who was a Samarian father god, verily, but a single tongue. So it says that people didn't have a multiplication of tongues at that time. There was one language in all the people. In those days, did Enki, another god, estranged the tongues in their mouth as many as were put there. So here it talks about the confusion of the languages, the tongues of men, which were one. What had been once, only one language, here's a multiplication. This comes again from that area where so much originated, and this is where the cradle of civilization. So this deals with Genesis 11. Also, here's the epic of Gilgamesh, the flood tablet 11. And the Neo-Babylonian cuneiform, upna-centimin, is the name of this Babylonian personage that went on, built a ship, and the flood came. And Gilgamesh was the king of Uruk around 1150 BC. So here it talks about the flood during Noah's day. Again, it confirms the Gilgamesh epic, which originally around 3000 BC, confirms the biblical account of the flood. But in contrast to the Bible, it contains many myths and inaccurate information, but it shows an original source, the flood stories.

There are hundreds of flood stories from all different types of civilizations.

If you ever go to southern Iraq, you can actually visit this tower. It's called a ziggurat in Ur of Chaldeans, the ancient home of Abraham. And it's still in almost top condition. You can still go up to the top here. This is a staircase. It's made of dried mud brick, and it has survived millennia. This not only shows the majesty of Ur and what Abraham had to give up when he obeyed God. Instead, he chose to go to live in the backwater area of Canaan. Also, the ziggurat is a prototype of the Tower of Babel. So all of these, they found about 38 of these towers in that area of Iraq, which are replicas of eventually the Tower of Babel. This is only partially. Of course, the top has eroded in time, but it's very large. Here, going to Genesis 12, we have the tomb of Beni Hassan, which is a semi-family entering Egypt around Abraham's time, talking about 2000 BC, with all their animals, tools, including bellows. Here are the bellows.

So these were, they had metal works, and there's some copper ignants being carried by the donkeys. So these were very resourceful. Again, they come from not the Egyptian, but to the east, the area where Abraham came from, Semites. This is the way they dressed. And notice, they also have musical instruments. That's the version of the guitar, the lyre. And they also have a plectrum. So if you look carefully, the fellow here, he has what they use today as a little clip to play the guitars with. They used to use a little oyster shell or something else to pluck the different strings. Notice also, this gives backing to the biblical description of Abraham's culture. Notice the multi-colored clothing, similar to what Joseph was given. So here we have these Semitic people, which include the Hebrews, and they have multi-colored clothing.

Just like Joseph had a beautiful multi-colored coat. It didn't say he was the only one that had one, but it was just so outstanding his father had given him one. The Egyptians had white linen clothing. So again, it gives us the account of Joseph, the multi-colored coat, the Semites noticed their color too. The Egyptians used to wear darker, reddish colors, whereas the Semites wear more lighter skin. Here is the latest and most probable site of where ancient Sodom stood. Now, I myself thought that Sodom was more toward the southern part of the Dead Sea, but now with these new discoveries and this archaeologist who used the Bible to identify more closely the place Stephen Collins has been digging there, he just finished the excavations this year. I get his report every day, basically, of the dig, and they have found a huge palace up here in this mound. It's to the east of the River Jordan. This is the Dead Sea. This is the size of the mound. Huge place!

And the Bible talks about that Abraham and Lot, they look down, and the term kirkur in Hebrew means the circle. And this area is a circle in the northern part of the Dead Sea. This is the Jordan River, and this is the area of what they believe is ancient Sodom. They have even found that there is a burnt level, which is similar to the time of Abraham. Remember, he went with Lot, and he knew about the destruction of it, and that whole area was destroyed. And by, you see this burnt level, and the heat was so intense, they never found in any other city what they found here, which is a green ceramic crystallized object. The heat was so intense that trinotite was formed, and the only place here in the United States where trinotite was formed is over there in Los Alamos, in the area of New Mexico where the atomic bomb was dropped. They have trinotite, too, where it just crystallized, even pottery. So this is the strongest possibility, and the information fits. This is not popular because the Israeli archaeologists don't want to go over here to the other side of the Jordan to confirm many of these things. So Stephen Collins has been able to set up this archaeological dig, and he's fully convinced. He said he used to think that Sodom was at the southern part of the Dead Sea, but now he's convinced he has found the remains of ancient Sodom.

Well, going from Abraham's time to Joseph's time, here's a tomb scene showing the investiture of the Egyptian Prime Minister, showing a ceremony very similar to the one described in Genesis 41-42 about Joseph's new and lofty position. It says there that the Pharaoh made Joseph the vizier the second in command, and he said they put on the necklace. They also put on a signet ring on him and very similar to the Egyptian customs of that time.

Here, etched in a tomb, it shows Egyptians going through a time of famine, purely seen by their emaciated bodies. Notice the ribs sticking out here. Got ribs. So this was a time of extreme famine in Egypt, and they were hoping for some relief. Genesis 41-55, so in all the land of Egypt was famished that people cried to Pharaoh for bread. Here's another confirmation what the Bible was talking about.

Here's another Egyptian mural shows Semites. These are people coming to Egypt, begging for bread, bowing, kneeling, and laying even backwards as they pleaded their case with an Egyptian dignitary. Here's the Egyptian dignitary and all these Semites. Notice very similar to the tombs in Beni Hassan, the way they dressed, and just asking and groveling before the function, the officer here for food, captivates their desperation.

Here's a tomb scene showing the grain silos used in Egypt. The silo is filled from the top. You see here? That's where they put the grains. Here's the silos filled with grain, and then it has a door where you take out. So the grain comes down and you're always using gravity just to bring it out. In Genesis 41.56, it talks about Joseph setting this up for those seven years of plenty to make sure they had a lot of grain available. Here's an Egyptian model found in a tomb. It shows a wealthy Egyptian checking out his camel. So they had these places where you'd bring the different types of cattle. Joseph could have sat in a similar place when he was selling the grain to those who came because of the long drought, including his brothers. Genesis 42, verse 6. Again, these aren't copies. These are the original tomb scenes. They've lasted thousands of years.

The brothers were taken to Joseph's house, Genesis 43, verse 16. And here is a model of a dignitary's home, probably similar. And it's very complete with a chapel. Here's a chapel. So you had your kind of a private church, a family chapel, a pool, because in Egypt it gets very hot in the summertime. So they actually had water piped in and out over here with nice shades. You have also the grain silos here, plenty of food, a servant's quarter next to the main house. And then you had the garage with all the Maseratis right here, the stables. They just picked whatever horse for whatever need they had. So this is the Hollywood-style mansion, but it was in Joseph's time. And when he was elevated, he probably had a house very similar to this. Probably his brothers, when they saw this, they were blown away. This is where Jacob came to live. From the time of drought to be brought, God had everything in place to save his people. Don't ever forget. He can do all kinds of miracles when he needs to. Here's an Egyptian funeral procession carrying the sarcophagus of a mummy. So this is the funeral procession. Genesis 57, so Joseph went up to bury his father, and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt. They all went to Canaan to have Jacob buried there alongside his relatives.

Now we go to the second book in the Bible, Exodus, chapter one. This is an Egyptian mural depicting the making of bricks as the Israelites had to do. And notice this is another pool but this wasn't to refresh yourself. This was to work to get the water out. It also has palm trees around. And here is an instruction manual on how to produce this mud brick. So you have them cutting it up. Here are the molds that you use. They're hollow at the bottom so you fill up the mud and then you turn it around and then you build up a wall with them just like it's done here. They use straw.

And they have, of course, the supervisors with a rod. This is the way they carried the brick.

So this is showing the making of bricks as the Israelites had to do, Exodus 1.14. Here's the oldest inscription of Yahweh that has been found in Sudan that says, The Land of the Nomads, Shasu of Yahweh, around the time that Israel had conquered Canaan. It refers to one of Egypt's northern enemies and they referred to Israel as those Westerners of the god Yahweh. So here we have a confirmation that Yahweh is a god of Israel. Remember that Pharaoh mentions in verse 5, he says, I don't know that god, that you want to take your people out in the desert to celebrate a feast. I don't know the Lord God. I don't know that Yahweh god. So again, this is from the temple of Solub, Ammonotep III, which probably was right after the Exodus.

And they're already talking about the people of the god Yahweh.

Here we have Exodus 7, an illustration of an Egyptian magician found in one of the temple murals, Exodus 7, 11. But Pharaoh also called the wise men and the saucers, so the magicians of Egypt. They also did in like manner with their enchantments, and you see them almost in living color here. What they dressed up with. They had to impress people, so they were very well dressed up. Now, Exodus 12, where God says this is the beginning of the months. We have the Geezer calendar around 1000 BC, David's time, revealing the agricultural periods and backing the seasons and 12 months of the biblical feasts. So it actually talks about what to do, when to plant, when to harvest, and it goes through the different months. Just like God said, this is the first month, abib, which means the young sprouts of grain. So that would be the beginning of your harvest. And here in Exodus 12, too, it says this will be the beginning of your months.

Now, we have calf worship in Exodus 32, and guess what? The discovery of a silver calf, idol shows Israelite practices a common custom of calf worship. They practiced a common custom of calf worship. There was a time when critics said, well, we don't see any calves being worshiped. Always, there has to be mature bulls. But here's an idol of a calf.

This is a very interesting discovery. Actually, when we went to the feast in Jordan, Ammon Jordan, they had discovered this a few years back, and it's an inscription mentioning Balaam, son of Beor, that was on the outside of a wall of a teaching center. So it probably had to do with the prophets in that area of Moab.

And in Numbers 22, verse 20, it talks about Balaam receiving, having a dream where God gave them instructions. And in this inscription, which is found there in a museum, we had a chance to see these inscriptions. It talks about the prophet Balaam, son of Beor, and receiving a dream from the gods. And so very similar to the biblical account, but from the point of view of the Moabites.

Now, talking about the Exodus, many critics say that, well, there's not too much evidence about Israel leaving Egypt and coming into Canaan. But actually, this is one of the proofs that Professor Charles Kamalkov says of the biblical account. In short, the biblical story of the invasion of the Transjordan that set the stage for the conquest of all Palestine is told against a background that is historically accurate. The Israelite invasion route, described in Numbers 33, 45 through 50, was in fact an official, heavily trafficked Egyptian road. And so you have the king list here. This is Pharaoh and Moses, the third, the Egyptian, and he mentions the same places where Israel mentions in the Bible, Numbers 33. So you have four of the same stopping areas that he went through. Debon is one of the important ones because archaeologists have not discovered in that area where they dug that there was a town, a city, at the time of the Israelites. But here, the Egyptian Thutmose III, which was before the Israelites left, he already mentions Debon. So there had to be a place by that name, thus confirming the biblical account of Numbers 33.

Now we come to the fall of Jericho. This is in Joshua chapter 6. The walls of Jericho fell down, but what is interesting is that they fell outward, not inward, against the gravity.

Joshua 6 verse 20 mentions that the walls fell flat. And since these were good constructors, these are the, it had a double wall. Notice the walls here fell. And what the construction workers were used to was to make the walls of the city a little bit inclined inward. So if the upper part fell, it fell inside and couldn't be used as a staircase for the enemies. And it talks about the Israelites. They climbed up and were able to reach the city. So this actually made a staircase. See those lights? They came in because the walls, although they were inclined inwardly, they fell outwardly here as well, here. So they were able to just use that as a staircase to go up into Jericho. That's unexplainable because walls that are inclined inward, how are they going to fall outward? So now we go to the time of David. Am I going too fast? A little bit? Okay, all right. Okay. In 1994, at Tel Dan, which is in northern Israel, an inscription was found that mentions the house of David and the king of Israel dated to the ninth century BC. Now, King David lived in the 10th century. So here, just a hundred years later, you already have people talking about the house of David. That's the dynasty of David. Those are the children, all the kings of Judah that were descendants of David. So it shows here the importance of this king and that David was a real person because critics used to talk about that it was like King Arthur of the Round Table, that this was a myth. They said that he hadn't actually existed. Well, here through archaeology, we find that the house of David did exist.

So that's an important find.

Now, during David's time, in 2 Samuel chapter 2 verses 12 through 17, it talks about a battle that between King David's men and those of General Abner, who were backing up, who was a Saul at that time and his descendants. Well, it talks there in 2 Samuel 2 about fighting next to a large cistern of water at that area of Gibeon. And guess what? You go to Gibeon, and you find this huge cistern that goes back to even before David's time, and you see people walking down the stairs, 88 feet deep. You can still find water down there. Now, if people writing these things weren't actually witnesses, how would they know that there was this huge cistern at Gibeon where they had that battle? Again, showing the accuracy of the biblical account. Here's another exciting find, which has just happened in the past 10 years or so. They probably found the remains of King David's palace by Elat Mazar in 2012. 2 Samuel 5, 17 says, and David went down to the citadel. So, David, here is Mount with the Dome of the Rock. That's the golden place. This is Jerusalem with the Temple Mount, and coming down, there's this stepped structure, which is still there. And Elat Mazar said, she looked at the biblical account, and it mentions David coming down. And so she knew that he had to live south of that area, at least coming down. She said, with her Bible, she looked and she thought, this is a probable place. They started digging, and they found the remains of a monumental palace. It's the largest palace found in Jerusalem. They've put a roof over it so they can work with the remains.

But she says, thanks to the Bible, she got a good bearing on where this palace could be found. Of course, the critics can't stand that some of these things are being discovered. Here's another interesting find. This is from a group from the University of California, San Diego. Archaeologist Thomas Levy has excavated through more than 20 feet of industrial smelting debris or slag and found a fortress at Kerbit Ennaz, meaning copper remains, and the ten naz, meaning copper remains in the Tim Valley. That's in the southern part of Israel. Solomon said he had so much copper and bronze, which he exported, that in 1 Kings 747, it says, the amount of bronze in which he used to build many of the parts of the temple and many other things. He says there was so much copper. Now bronze is the mixture between copper and tin, which makes it harder. It's more valuable. We still use bronze statues up to today because they last so long. Here Solomon had the trade, and he had the lock on this. This is a whole complex that was found with the hills and these mountains where they brought the copper.

It's interesting. It has the same type of gates that Solomon used in other parts, and they have found the remains of the animals, the bones of the workers that were there, and they didn't find any made with pigs, no shellfish. Like in the other area where the Gentiles lived, you always have a mixture of different bones. These are all clean foods showing more indication that there were Israelites that were there at the time.

Here's a beautiful seal mentioning the biblical king Jeroboam. It could be Jeroboam I or his son Jeroboam II. But here's another personage that the Bible mentions in 1 Kings 11, Jeroboam. This is one that I have a bit of affection for. Aaron Mayer discovered what appears to be a tourist souvenir in Tell Dan. It appears to be a representation of calf worship. Now, I was at a conference in San Diego where Aaron Mayer presented this discovery, and he couldn't figure out exactly what it was, but he says, well, we see a calf here, and we see a god, and then we see a person next to it. And I said, Dr. Mayer, I have a background. I used to be a Catholic. And in front of all the Catholic cathedrals, they have these little stands where they'll sell you the little statuettes or little plates with a Virgin Mary and with maybe a little Indian, if it's the Virgin of Guadalupe or the Virgin of Lourdes. They always have the person. They're a little Indian who saw this image. And here's what appears to be someone saluting the image of this god. Now, in Israel, when they built the calves, it wasn't to worship the calves as such, but what was the invisible god on top of the calf. And here you have the representation of that particular god. And so that was very interesting, and Dr. Mayer agreed with that deduction. Here's a sad part of the Bible, 2 Kings chapter 3. This is called the Mishah stila, where the Moabite king, Mishah, boasts of defeating Israel and winning back their freedom from the house of Amri, but failed to say it was after sacrificing his son. This is another place where it talks also about the house of David. They found that later on in some of the area. This Moabite stone was found in Jordan and by some of the Arab Bedouins. And so when someone showed interest, a westerner showed interest. What they did is they broke the rock up so they could sell the parts of it. Well, thankfully, before they did that, one of the archaeologists was able to make a plastic, a plaster mold of the entire thing before it's broken up. This is in the Louvre Museum, by the way, if you're ever over there.

Now, this is in the British Museum, the one that is in the French Museum. We're going to see in a little while longer. But in 2 Kings 3, verses 26 and 27, it talks about King Misha and how the Israelites came to invade it. And since he knew all hope was lost, he sacrificed his son in front and threw him in the fire. And the Israelites thought that was so disgusting. See all their faces there? They're all so disgusted that they turned around and left. And King Misha declared it a great victory. And so he's boasting in the monument that he threw off the Israelites. And he mentions the house of Omri, one of the powerful Israelite kings and his sons.

So the Bible account is confirmed, but from two different perspectives. Here is one of the few pictures we have of what appears to be the Israelite king bowing before King Shalmaneser. He records the Israelite King Yehu bowing before him. The Bible also admits Jehu paid tribute to Shalmaneser. So Shalmaneser records, and he mentions the name of Jehu, again from the house of Omri that came, paid tribute to him. Here's a, and this is a Semite again, bowing before the king of Assyria. So the Bible explains history as the famous remark by President Roosevelt, which when they asked him how he wanted to be painted, he had warts and everything, and the painter said, well, President Roosevelt, how do you want to be painted? He said, well, warts and all. Paint me warts and all. Well, the Bible shows all the deficiencies and defects of Israelite kings. So it shows, it says, Jehu paid tribute. He bowed down before Shalmaneser in the sense of humbling himself.

That's Franklin Roosevelt, by the way. Here's another confirmation of the biblical account, 2 Kings 17. The Nimrod prism that records the Assyrian king Sargon boasting of the destruction of Samaria and taking the captives to Assyria and other dominions. So here's another Assyrian king boasting that he took Samaria, the capital of the ten northern tribes of Israel, which happened. It's described in the Bible, and it mentions also the term king Sargon, or the equivalent.

Here's a seal of King Hezekiah. They found this seal in Jerusalem. It says, in situ means in its original place. Nobody handled it, put it there. It's in its place. It says, belonging to Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, king of Judah, just like in 2 Kings, chapter 18, verse 1, the beginning of Hezekiah's rule. Now, a seal is a very interesting, it's one of the things that archaeologists try to find when they uncover a city, because when official documents were written, usually in papyrus rolls, the scroll would be wrapped up, and then the king would use his ring, which had there an impression, and he would put that in a wet clay, and then they would seal it, just like later on they would use wax, but this time it was wet clay, and then they put the documents in the archives, and also those that came in, or they sent it off, but the thing is, when a fire burned a city down, and the palace was ransacked and burnt, one of the few things that survived were the seals, because being made of clay with the heat, it turned it into, baked it into ceramic, and so they can last thousands of years, and here you have the impression of those seals. Probably the king's Hezekiah's very ring made this.

Now here is when the Assyrians invaded Israel, and Judah, rather, at that time they had already taken Samaria, the northern ten tribes, only Judah remained, and in 2 Kings 18, it talks about the Assyrian king Sennacherib coming in and conquering 48 of these cities, and one of the ones that's described in the Bible, as well as in the palace of the Assyrian king, where this basch relief is found, is the taking of the Judean city of Lakish, described in 2 Kings 1814. Now notice here that this is the actual city of Lakish, and the defenders are throwing torches down on the Assyrians. The Assyrians have this ramming device. They're shooting arrows here, and they've already taken some of the captives. Now the Assyrians were the bloodiest and cruelest of the ancient peoples at that time because they impaled the soldiers. They were the ones that established impaling, which later the Romans took and turned it into crucifixion. So at least with the Assyrians, it didn't last very long. The Romans got the idea, let him hang there for as long as he can, but they impaled their enemies. This is called the Jerusalem Prism, where the Assyrian kings in Acre boasts, it's 45 Judean cities, not 48, 45, and besieging Jerusalem, having Hezekiah trapped as a bird in a cage. So he mentions King Hezekiah. He mentions taking 45 of those cities, including Lakish, but he doesn't say he took Jerusalem, which of course was the plumb. That was the ripest. That was the biggest city. He just said he had them trapped because in 2 Kings 18 when Hezekiah went before God and Isaiah the prophet told him, don't worry, this is God's battle. And all of a sudden, 180,000 of the soldiers that were laying siege around Jerusalem, they died of a plague. They all died, and King Saranacarib had to flee back to his country. Well, what did he say? Oh, I got defeated in this miraculous battle? No, he said, oh, I took 45 of the cities and I have Hezekiah surrounded like in a cage, but he doesn't say he took it. And Saranacarib died shortly thereafter, assassinated by his two sons, and the end of this invasion took place, and Jerusalem was saved at that time. So here we have the Assyrian version of that, and it is accurate because it doesn't claim to have taken Jerusalem. This is another important find, the Cyrus cylinder, where King Cyrus of Persia decrees that the Jewish captives taken by the Babylonians were free to return to Judah, just as Isaiah 44 and others had predicted, and Ezra 1 through 3, it has the decree. Again, this is the Persian decree, and then you have the Israelite decree, and both of them say that the people who have been captured can return back to their homeland. This is the decree by Cyrus that God prophesied that he would use Cyrus to spare his people of destruction and that they eventually would become a people again. So we have here a biblical example of it. Josephus mentions in his history that Daniel, actually he was still alive when Cyrus was the king and that Daniel showed him the prophecies, mentioning Cyrus by name. Cyrus was so impressed that he said, I'm going to free your people and other peoples as well. And God calls him my servant, Cyrus, Isaiah 45. Okay, so Isaiah 44, 45, mentions King Cyrus by name hundreds of years before Cyrus would come on the scene.

A section, we're finishing up the Old Testament of the Old Testament. The Isaiah The Dead Sea Scrolls found in 1948. There are 900 different parts of which 215 are sections of the Old Testament, including the full book of Isaiah. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed the faithfulness of the transmission of the Old Testament text. So here you have probably about 100 years before the time of Christ that was written, copied the book of Isaiah, and then a thousand years later we have the first manuscript that still exists of the book of Isaiah, the Aleppo Scroll. And you compare them, and they're like 99 percent the same. Just a couple of misspellings and variants here and there, but the whole book of Isaiah was copied faithfully. So we know we have the true copies of the Bible. They have not been invented. Here's in Jeremiah 36. This is the discovery of the Baruch seal impression, which the translation says, belongs to Baruch, son of Nariah, described, just like it says in Jeremiah 36.4.

Now it's interesting that on the left there's a fingerprint. So when Baruch put the seal in the document and a part of his thumb was there, and so we might have the fingerprint of Baruch, the son of Nariah, Jeremiah's scribe. So you can look up these things later on. Here's one of the last ones. This one I'm dedicating it to Wolfgang.

This is the Ishtar gate. This is one in my bucket list. So I want to go to the feast in Germany as soon as I can get out of taking care of Portova Yorda for so many years. This is the place I want to go see the Ishtar gate. The eighth gate to ancient Babylon was reconstructed out of the original material excavated at Babylon and now can be seen in Berlin's Pergamon Museum. Never been there, Wolf? No, okay. Nahum prophesied these mighty gates would open to the conquering Persians as God had decreed. He says, Nahum 3.13, the gates of your enemies, the gates of your land are wide open to your enemies. Remember that King Cyrus lowered the waters of the river Babylon that ran through Babylon? He had a detour, the water from the river. It went out to this lake and it lowered enough that his men got underneath the gates there where the waterway was, which of course had these iron places, but the water went down so much they were able to get underneath and they were able to open the gates without a fight.

And God said those gates would, said Babylon would never be rebuilt again. And sure enough, what do you find? You don't find the destruction. You can actually rebuild those gates because they were not smashed in like all the rest of the gates of all the conquered cities. And look at the size of that gate. And actually the Germans, being so diligent, actually excavated the two. And the bigger part of the back one, they've got them in crates in storage because it is so huge, no, the museum can't handle it. So this is the smaller, this is the Ishtar Gate here, made of glazed ceramic tile.

So you're looking at one of the original gates of the city of Babylon.

Okay, how are we doing in time? I might be able to squeeze it in. Okay, this is the first century Israelite house. This was an architectural plan that the Israelites developed. It's called the four-room home. And basically, these are the walls. You have here the rooms upstairs where people slept, and you had the animals sleep in their pens, and you had a manger there. Now, the animals helped heat the place.

Never slept next to a dog or a cat or whatever. At least they heat you up. Well, these are big animals. And so all the heat would rise up, and you'd have a warm floor as a result. And you also didn't have to worry about cattle or sheep rustlers. So you kept these animals. Of course, this is a bigger house. You have, like the Egyptians, they had a much bigger place. But here, this is a typical home.

This is the controversial, and really it's not that controversial anymore, the Azurah of James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. They have confirmed that the writing is original, and this is most probable. Probably 98% sure that this was a place where the bones of James, the half-brother of Jesus Christ, were placed. Here's another find in 2005. The Bethesda pool mentioned with five porticoals in John 5.2, and discovered in 2005.

So when this was discovered, one of the things the critics didn't believe in was when John said that there was this pool. This is where the crippled man was healed, that it had five porticoals, which are these roofed areas. And they said, well, how can that be? All the pools that we have ever found have four. So people can change, they can be protected against the rain. And what did they find? They found that there are actually two pools here, one for the women and one for the men.

And here, count them. One, two, three, four, and five. Just like the Apostle John said, he knew what he was talking about. This is, by the way, this is to pure, the purity to purify themselves from uncleanness, so they could continue their activities.

That's why it was so big. In Jerusalem, you had to do that before the festivals. Here's what is found the earliest papyrus copy of the New Testament, the John Ryland's papyrus, the earliest part of the New Testament, around A.D. 125. That means that just about maybe 30 years after the death of the Apostle John, the first writings of the New Testament are found.

They contain a section of John 18. It shows how early the gospel of John was written. Here's another bone box. This is called Joseph's son of Cephas, one of the high priests that presided over the trial of Jesus. Josephus named him as Joseph, who was called Cephas. In the Bible, in the New Testament, he's called Cephas, just as he is named in the New Testament. So they used his typical name, Cephas. In 1968, evidence was found of a crucifixion with a nail going through the heel bone and with part of the wood still intact. It also shows the heel bone and not the feet. It was perforated and could sustain the weight of the body.

So this is anatomically correct. If you put a nail through a person's hand and you have them hanging there, the weight will eventually tear and you just fall. But if you put it through the wrists and through the ankles, that sustains the weight. And here, the Romans used the heel. This went through the well, it was the heel bone that was perforated to sustain the weight of the body.

So it again shows this is accurate. This is called the Nazareth inscription found in Nazareth, where Jesus Christ grew up. It's probably from Tiberias or Claudius. Strong warning about meddling with tombs and graves. So this was Edict saying, you must be careful and not deal meddling with tombs and graves.

The punishment was death. Possibly a report from Pilate had got back to Rome about empty tombs and all the problems. Matthew 28, 15, it mentions about these soldiers that were bribed to say, oh, they came in and they took the body. And this is a rumor that ran. And of course, Rome was very concerned about what had happened. And so here's a decree that it says possibly, but it coincides with the resurrection of Jesus Christ and problems they had with somebody coming back from the grave.

In the book of Acts, we have the story of William Ramsey, a British historian, atheist professor from Oxford. He set out to prove Luke's account, contained many errors and myths. He spent 20 years in his quest. Yet, after all those years, he admitted defeat and surprised the world by becoming a Christian. He wrote a classic book on Paul called Saint Paul, The Traveler and the Roman Citizen. He says, Luke is a historian of the first rank. Not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy. He is possessed of the true historic sense. In short, this author should be placed along the very greatest of historians.

Some recent excavations in the place called Pella, where the church in Jerusalem fled before the siege of Jerusalem in A.D. 68. What did they find? They found these caves during that time and places of worship that indicated Jewish Christian presence. Just like the Bible mentioned that in Luke 19 43, talking about that Jerusalem would be fenced in and that you had to flee to the hills when you saw that siege. And sure enough, the Jewish Christians fled before the siege was closed and over a million Jews died in Jerusalem by hands of the Romans in 70 A.D. But in 68 A.D., the Jewish Christian community, and according to Eusebius, a historian, in the day of Pentecost, they heard a voice saying, Get thee out of here. Get thee hence. And they took their things with them and they fled and were protected at that time. In Acts 13, a boundary stone of Claudius mentioning Sergius was discovered at Rome in 1887 and records the appointment of the curators of the banks and the channel of the river Tiber, one of whom was Sergius Paulus, mentioned in Acts 13, 6 through 12, another biblical personage confirmed by archaeology. Here, Acts 16, I'm not going to belabor the point, but many geographers, when they traced Paul's journeys in this second trip that he did, he came all the way to this part and then it says the Holy Spirit said, Don't go any further. And so then they, those commentators in Bible atlases said he went north and then he went to Troas. This is the way people thought, but through archaeology, they found that the Roman roads didn't go up north here. They weren't connected. And so the Bible, when it mentions he had to have a detour, the Spirit didn't allow him to go, he actually went south and went through this route, which was the Roman road of those days. So it shows here the route that Paul took, came up here, and eventually made it to Troas. He didn't go this way, like older commentators. This is the way the Roman route went. And Luke records the places where he stopped that would have had the same route of the Roman roads. This is one of the last ones the statue of Diana of Ephesus. There are 18 historical references or terms that occur in Acts 19. Thanks to a century of excavation, the wealth of ensuing data corroborates Ramsey's claim that Luke's account is vivid and true to the situation and surroundings. And that takes us to the last one. That's in our days. I want to update you about what is happening in Mount Ararat.

From 2004 to 2014, expeditions have found a wooden object up in Mount Ararat. Harvard trained archaeologist Joel Clank. By the way, I've talked to Panda Lee, this gentleman here. Ray was there as well, and Lenny, they accompanied me. Remember Panda Lee? This was a man who didn't even believe in God as such. He was a Hong Kong mountain guide that worked for the British at that time. It was part of the Hong Kong British colony, and he was hired to go up there, and he found the wood up here. Now some were saying that, well, maybe it was a hoax and somebody built something. But more expeditions, and Joel Clank was one of the ones. I also talked with him several times, Harvard trained archaeologists, and he found a monumental wood structure, and other smaller wood edifices, and a cave that originated from the late Epi-Paleolithic period, which is right there after the ice age, and also still the advanced stone age. This is interesting that this ship, which was found next to the pyramids in Gissa, the Khufu ship, is built the same way as the ship up on the Mount Ararat, using mortise and tenon joints. No iron or bronze or copper was found. Now, in March 2014, Dutch archaeologist Gerouen Ressen confirmed the find. He says, there, in a fissure within the ice cap, under 10 meters of rock, ice, and snow, we found well-preserved wooden remains and pottery, too. He was accompanied by a doctor, Dr. Marcel Verregen, who he added, in response to the critics that wood and artifacts were deliberately planted, he says, that is absolutely impossible. The mountain's terrible terrain is rather inaccessible, let alone to carry beams of wood. You need to be there, and see it with your own eyes, before you put forward any hypothesis. I am 100% sure that it is impossible to plant such a structure there, what they found. This is the wood walls. And now, just a little later, October of 2014, Philip Ernest Williams, also went inside the arc-like object. I have a book by him, written in 2012, talking about the different discoveries, and he himself went in 2014 and confirmed the same find. You see the wooden pegs, many times to latch animals, too. There's a terrible stench of manure inside, which indicate a lot of animals were inside there at one time.

And so, Seven Ways Noah's Ark would be a witness to the world. It would be a witness to a mostly unbelieving world. Boy, when that thing is confirmed, it should have been confirmed five years ago, or seven years ago. In 2010, the evidence was there, but the press that doesn't want it found, science doesn't want it found, they deliberately have smothered it, stonewalled it. But believe me, there are more expeditions, and they're all confirming this find. So, it's going to be something when that is announced one day, that Noah's Ark, the remains of it, has been found. Number two, it would be a witness that God exists, for only a supreme being could have given the warning ahead of time. How do you get a wooden structure 14,000 feet up there, and that it didn't get there by people pushing it up. It had to come down from the water and lay there.

It would be a witness that prophecy is true, for nobody would have built a ship like this to survive a universal flood, unless he was told ahead of time. It also shows prophecy still is true for the future, for the same God gave it. Somebody had to know ahead of time there was going to be a flood to build such an ark. We're finishing up. It would be a witness to the Bible being true, for it is the only source that accurately describes such a ship and the moral reasons for it to have been built. It would be a witness to science and show how far off man's ideas are about evolution, geology, and stratigraphy. They would have to explain, where is this flood that you said never existed? We have the evidence that there's a boat up there, and it only could happen with a universal flood. It would be a witness to the immorality in the world, for it would show God once before had to intervene because mankind had disregarded his laws. And boy, are we seeing things going downhill so quick. Number seven, it would be a witness to the church, for God would have given us the greatest marketing tool since the empty tomb almost 2,000 years ago. Are we up to the task, or will God have to use some other Church of God group? We have the means. We have the most manpower. But will we be ready to take this message in a powerful way to the world? That is the question. So, brethren, we've taken a tour through the Bible to show you how much God carries out His will, that the Bible is accurate, that it is inspired, and that's why man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Matthew 4.4