| Ark of the Covenant | Added: March-05-04 |
We are assured in Scripture that another Temple will be built during the coming Tribulatioin Period or just prior to the Rapture of the Church (born-again believers). The Antichrist is to set himself up in the temple of God and proclaim himself as God (II Thessalonians 2:4). The primary reason for the tabernacle and the temple was to provide a house for the Ark of the Covenant.
In a September 1935 article in National Geographic L. Roberts recorded various interviews with priests in Ethiopia who repeatedly recounted that the Queen of Sheba had married King Solomon and had a child, Menelik I. It is said that Solomon educated the child in Jerusalem until he was nineteen years old. The young prince then reutrned to Ethiopia with a large group of Jews, taking with him the true Ark of the Covenant. Many believe that this Ark is now in some church along the northern boundary of present-day Ethiopia in an underground temple.
It is said that King Solomon was to send a replica of the Ark with Menelik, but while a banquet was being given, Menelik switched arks and left the replica in its place. In the Jewish magazine, B'nai B'rith Messenger, it is stated: "The Tablets of the Law received by Moses on Mount Sinai and the Ark of the Covenant, both said to have been brought to Ethiopia from Jerusalem by Menelik, the son of King Solomon indicates that a Jewish group attempted to arrange insurance underwriting for the Ark of the Covenant from a French syndicate in 1936 for war damage during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia..."
Moreover, it is said that a young boy is chosen at age seven from the High Priest's family and he fast 225 days a year and prayerfully guards the Ark in the Holy of Holies for the rest of his life. Thus, for 3,000 years the Ark has been continuously guarded by a line of these guardians.
Does the Bible reveal anything about the location of the Ark? In Isaiah 18, we find reference that some believe is an Ark prophecy for the time of the end:
"Woe to the land shodowing with wings, which is beyond the rives of Ehtiopia:...All ye in habitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up and ensign (sign some believe is the Ark) on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye" (Isaiah 18:1,3).
Also Isaiah 18:7:
"In that time shall the present (again, a sign believed to refer to the Ark) be brought unto the LORD of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the LORD of hosts, the mount Zion."
Again, I don't know where the Ark of the Covenant is located, I wish I did. But I thought this was interesting.