Question:
My dad brought this scriptire to my attention. What is your take on it? Revelation 11:19 (NIV)
Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm. So the ark is not here on earth anymore?
Answer:
As for Rev 11:19, this is apocalyptic literature. Such writing should always be taken as symbolic unless the context implies differently. The ark was destroyed some time several hundreds of years BC. The evidence does not tell us exactly who and when it was destroyed. Possibly Pharaoh Neco did it when he took items from the temple. We know that whatever was left in the temple was taken by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon in about 595 BC. The evidence is that the ark was no longer there. Probably it had been destroyed and the gold melted down long before Nebuchadnezzar came in and desecrated the temple. Coptic Christians claim that they have the ark in a cathedral in Axum. This claim is certainly bogus and should be rejected. They refuse to allow anyone to see this supposed ark in Axum. The ark is long gone…. Revelation 11:19 should not be taken literally, but symbolically. Either way, it is not relevant to the question about what happened in the distant past to the ark. The search for the ark is kind of like searching for unicorns or Noah’s ark. It is a waste of time and a distraction.
That is my opinion.
John Oakes
Hello again! I hope everything is going well with you. Thanks a lot for your prayers about our trip. It went very well. We definitely felt the spiritual battle while there. Stephen Kolter and I are helping a brother to be restored and he and I went together. We had a lot of heart talks. Prayerfully, he will do what God is urging him to do. His name is Vincent Lynn. Please pray for him.
By the way, have you read Joe Beam’s book called “Seeing the Unseen”? Quiet an insightful book about spiritual warfare. Any recommendations on other books that you know of along these lines? I know of This Present Darkness.
Also, my dad brought this scriptire to my attention. What is your take on it?
Revelation 11:19 (NIV)
Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm.
So the ark is not here on earth anymore?
YBIC,
