Can you believe the Bible? And does it really matter? How can you be sure that the Bible is all it's cracked up to be? Join David Curry, a pastor, author and worldwide traveler, as he shares his knowledge of many biblical places throughout the Middle East. He will take you on a journey through numerous archaeological finds that prove the validity of the biblical narrative, showing that you can believe what many have rejected. Welcome to the biblical wonders in the Middle East.
Here is your host, Pastor David Curry. I trust you'll be blessed today for tuning into our program. Let's visit today Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and probably Israel as well.
Amana is the capital of Jordan and a very popular place for tourists to go. If you haven't been there and you're traveling overseas, I recommend you go sometime. It's a very clean and progressive place.
I've been there a number of times over the years, and every time I've been there, I've seen new projects, new infrastructure, as well as the old places being preserved. And one of those old places is the Amphitheater, which holds about 6000 people and was built about 200 BC. At that time, Aman wasn't known as Aman, but as Philadelphia.
This was to the Romans, of course, who controlled it. The Amphitheater was in some disrepair, but in 1957, just a few years ago, it was restored. Today, the Jordanians often have concerts and other things in this theater.
On the hill opposite this theater is what is called the Citadel. In the Citadel there are a number of old buildings, but there's a very fine museum which contains artifacts from Petra, Gerash, and of particular interest, some Dead Sea Scrolls. These are copper ones.
You know, when the Dead Sea caves were found and these scrolls were found, the territory was in Jordan. But the 67 War changed that, and today it's in Israel. And we'll come to that a little bit later.
These scrolls are copper ones and they date back to at least the first century Ad. There's an old coin from Shechem, which is the oldest coin found in Palestine. And Shechem, of course, is where Abraham arrived after God called him out of Ur of the Chaldees.
The museum also displays some wheat grains, and believe it or not, they go right back to 900 BC. Isn't it amazing how long wheat can last? An interesting place to visit in Jordan is Madaba near this place is what we call Mount Nebo, often called Pizza's Heights. From the high ground here, you can look down to the Dead Sea, across to Jerusalem.
You can see Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. You can almost see from Ten to Beersheba. And you may remember that this is what Moses saw when God gave him a vision of the Holy Land, even though he was not allowed to enter it.
At Madaba is an old church called St. George's Church. Inside there is a map on the floor in mosaics of the Holy Land.
It's the oldest map we have of detail to the Middle East. The mosaic which this map is made of covers lands from Egypt to Egypt, including sites such as Bethlehem and Gethsemane. But the gem of the mosaic is the detailed representation of the city of Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem portion of the map shows a number of specific structures and streets in the city, such as the Damascus Gate, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Tower of David. The Madam map may not be complete, but is still our most comprehensive overview of the biblical landscape. You know, it's amazing to me how well this map has been preserved over the years.
Well, we traveled back to a place called Heshbon, and we traveled back on a very dusty road, I might say. But here at Heshbon, Andrews University has led in archaeological diggings over a number of years. Professor Larry Garrity met us here and showed us some of the recent finds, such as a tomb with a stone disc that rolled back on a track to cover the entranceway.
This is very similar to Joseph's tomb that Jesus was placed back at Jerusalem. You know, there were some children following us while we were at Heshbong, and they were asking questions like where we were from and where we were going to, why we were there. They were such nice children.
In fact, I gave them a ballpoint pen for which they are very grateful and courteous in receiving. Before we got there, they had been watering tomato plants, which were growing very well, and this was in a nearby garden, and it was great to see them working that way. We visited Syria and to its northernmost city, Aleppo, which you may know has been in the news lately with bombing from the coalition against the ISIS.
The museum in Aleppo is well worth a visit. They display artifacts from Old Babylonian and some of the finds from Talmadique, where we'll go shortly at the museum. We went 55 from Aleppo to Madique.
When I first visited Madique, the homes and storehouses that they had there were shaped just like huge beehives. But more recently, the people have replaced these by more modern homes. But we found the people very friendly.
In fact, most of the men had been employed at Tel Mardique, which is nearby. Italian archaeologists have been digging at this tell for about 25 years. And, you know, they finally came across a large library in the palace of the king.
They found something like 1800 complete tablets, all in cuneiform writing, and 4700 broken pieces of tablets. As these tablets and pieces have been translated, it has given so much more understandings of these ancient peoples. The inhabitants were the people of Ebla, a very early kingdom of Syria that reaches right back to 2000 BC.
You know, some of the tablets mentioned trading deals with Sodom and Gomorrah. This was quite remarkable because Sodom and Gomorrah had never been found. It's also interesting that the same time that they were reading these tablets and finding these names Sodom and Gomorrah, they also were discovering the cities of the plain, the five cities of the plain, including Sodom and Gomorrah.
Paello Methai was the chief Italian archaeologist at the site of Talmadique and was greatly rewarded with the find of this library. It's one of the great finds of the 20th century by archaeologists. You know, unfortunately, the wooden shelves that the tablets were on had decayed and collapsed, and many of the clay tablets were broken.
That's why they had so many pieces. As I mentioned earlier, however, the Italians have painstakingly put them together and have been rewarded with so much information about these ancient people whom we hardly knew existed. You know, there's another place that we visited and that was anciently called Tadmore.
In the Bible, the second Chronicles, the 8th chapter in verse four, it mentions that King Solomon built Tadmore in the wilderness. Well, you know, it really is in the wilderness. You go about 3 hours travel from Damascus in Syria, of course, and there you're traveling across desert and all of a sudden you come to this beautiful oasis.
This today is called Palmyra, not Telltadmore, as it was in Solomon's day, and it truly is in the wilderness. And there's some remarkable old buildings there. It truly is an oasis because all around they're beautiful date palms growing in the waters that come out of the city area.
Unfortunately, as the ISIS were being destroyed by a coalition of nations recently, and as they were forced out of Palmyra, which they had controlled for a few months, they literally blew up the old castle and other precious buildings there. This was a great tragedy, but still there are many buildings left. However, for us today, we have another biblical place that still exists and confirms the biblical record.
I like that, don't you? I'm amazed that Solomon had his builders come all this way to build a city. What a great distance to travel in those days. Well, before leaving the north part of the Middle East, we must visit Lebanon.
For years, this has been a real jewel in the Middle East. It's often mentioned the Bible. In fact, 17 books of the Old Testament record dealings with Lebanon.
Often the passages are dealing with the cedar trees of Lebanon. King Solomon was friends with King Hiram of Tyre, who arranged for cedarwood to be taken to Jerusalem. You know, they cut it out of the forests and then they took these big logs down to the port of Biblos.
From there it was rafted down along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea to the port of Joppa in Israel and then taken up to Jerusalem. Can you imagine how they would do it in those days? I mean, we have bulldozers, we have cranes and all those sort of things. But they had their hands.
Well, it was cut to the correct sizes and the House of Solomon and the Temple of Solomon were built. Today, the large cedars are no more, but there are new forests of cedars growing with government assistance. Big cedars take centuries to grow and it's just a shame that there are not some left on the hills where they once grew in an abundance.
Well, we mentioned the port of Biblos. When we talked about Egypt. We mentioned how the prophets predicted that the papyrus reeds would not be growing in Egypt.
When the Egyptian papyrus failed, the world supply was then furnished from Biblos. In fact, the very word Biblos means book. We get our English word Bible from this Greek word.
The Bible is indeed the book. When you travel from Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, up to Biblos, you travel over a very old river called the Dog River. On the banks of the river on the Beirut side, that is, are hills.
All over these hills are dotted memorials from various nations that were victorious in crossing the river. One of the earliest memorials is that of King Nebuchadnezzar. And I was amazed that you can still see on this sandstone the actual relief or figure of King Nebuchadnezzar.
There are many more recent ones by the French and the British. The idea was that if they could cross the Dog River and beat the local people in battle, then they'd put up their memorial on these hills south of Beirut. Still in Lebanon are two cities mentioned in scripture.
They are Sidon and Tyre. When Alexander the Great was conquering the world, he brought his soldiers to Sidon, and that was back in 332 BC. There was a great slaughter of its inhabitants.
You know, this was predicted long before it happened. I'd like to read to you some verses from Ezekiel 28 20 to 23. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, son of man, set your face towards Sidon and prophesy against her and say, thus says the Lord God, behold, I am against you, O Sidon, I'll be glorified in your midst.
And they shall know that I am the Lord when I execute judgments in her and am hallowed in her, for I will send pestilence upon her and blood in her streets. Many of the people of Sidon were slain and there was a great bloodshed by Alexander's men. But it doesn't say that Sidon would not be rebuilt as it does for Tyre.
Today. There's an old crusader castle in the harbour of Sidon and from that castle you get a very good view of the harbour and the city of Sidon. Today, the city is called Seida and it's the third largest city of Lebanon and one of the old cities of the world.
Well, let's now travel down about 20 city to Tyre. This old city, which was destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar, is no more and can't even be found. This is exactly as the word Ezekiel wrote in Ezekiel 26.
It reveals that Nebuchadnezzar would come against the city and destroy it. Then it was 200 years later when Alexander came down to Lebanon and finally to Tyre. The inhabitants were living on an island about a kilometer from the shoreline of Old Tyre.
Alexander didn't have boats, so you know what he did? He had his soldiers build a causeway out to the island. As Ezekiel says, they would lay your stones and your timber and your soil in the midst of the water. Even today, you can see some of the pillars of Old Tyre in the waters.
Boys often find coins from the Greek occupation in these waters. On one visit there, I purchased some of these coins from the boys and they were pleased to get the money, and I was pleased to discover that they were genuine and came from Greek times. Ezekiel continues to say that Old Tyre would be like the top of a rock and fishermen would place their nets there.
Well, I photograph this very scene, fishermen bringing in their nets and laying them over areas to dry. And these were areas probably from the Old city, but who knows? The prophet also says that the old city would never be found again. Ezekiel 26 26 exclaims this very clearly.
If anybody has doubts about the prophecy of the Bible, you take them to Ezekiel 26 and find their number of predictions against the city of Tyre that have all been wonderfully fulfilled. Allow me to take the time to list them for you. First, Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the city, and that's exactly what happened.
He destroyed the old city. Then it says the Old City's rubble would be placed in the water, and that's exactly what happened. It was 200 years later, but that's what Alexander's man did because they wanted to build this causeway out to the island where the tire people were now residing.
The old city would be like the top of a rock. Fishermen would spread their nets over it, and that's exactly what I saw as a city. It would be no more.
And then the last verse of chapter 26 says, it would be never found again. And this is absolutely amazing. It's never been found.
These six amazing prophecies against the old city and that it could never be found again are just remarkable. Archaeologists say that the springs of water at Rassalane may have supplied Old Tyre with fresh water by way of an aqueduct. It's probably the nearest thing to finding where Old Tyre may have been.
We can surely believe in Bible prophecy as the sure word of God. In the Beirut Archaeological Museum, there's a very fine sarcophagus of Hiram, king of Tyre, who was very good friends with King Solomon. And this was around a thousand BC.
They also have on display the oldest readable Phoenician script. Nearby is a leaf of Phoenician rowing ship with two rows of oars. And it also had sails, the Phoenicians controlled shipping in the Mediterranean Sea in their heyday.
It was probably a Phoenician ship that Jonah boarded on his way to Tarshish, or as we know today, as Spain. He was going the opposite way to where God called him to Nineveh. And during the wild storm he was thrown overboard only to land up inside a huge fish prepared by God.
In the museum there is also a dagger and a sheath, and can you believe it, they go right back to the times of Abraham. Unfortunately, this museum was seriously damaged, along with many other historical buildings in the recent Beirut port explosion. We hope that many of these items have been saved.
Let us now begin our visit to the land of Israel. We'll spend a few days there in these presentations that we have. There's so much to be seen in Israel that supports the Scriptures.
When arriving at the customs halls of Israel, it's wise to get them to put an Israeli stamp on a separate piece of paper to your passport and not on your passport. The reason being that if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport, you'll not be allowed into most Arab nations. Most entry plays in Israel do this automatically today, but it's still wise to make sure.
Israel is the land where Jesus was born, where he lived and died and was resurrected. It is where most of the scriptures were written. Israel is where most the prophets lived and they spoke and were inspired to write the Scriptures in this land.
It is also the land from which Jesus called his disciples to go and take the Gospel to all the world. And so this is why we'll visit Israel a few times in this series. Not far from the River Jordan, where you cross over it, by the way of the Ellenbee Bridge, is the old city of Jericho.
Israel grows dates, oranges and other citrus fruits, pomegranates, bananas and other fruits that are grown best in a warm climate. And of course, this is Jericho. Jericho is mentioned many times in the early part of the Old Testament in the Book of Numbers.
At least seven times in the book, it talks about the plains of Moab over against Jericho in Joshua's record, the story of the destruction of Jericho when the Israelites marched around it every day. And on the 7th day of marching, the priests blew their trumpets and the walls caved in and Israel was able to take the city. At the same time, they saved a woman by the name of Rahab, who was the mother of Boaz, who in turn married Ruth a Moabitess.
Rahab had protected the spies that Joshua had sent into Israel to spy out the land. As a prelude to Israel occupying the land, boaz and Ruth also became ancestors of King David and as such were progenitors of Jesus Christ at Jericho. Is a spring of pure water which is called Elisha's well.
It provides much of modern Jericho with very good drinking water. Not very far from this well is a sycamore tree, where tradition says was the tree that Zacchaeus climbed to get a better view of Jesus as he came by. Zacchaeus was a tax collector, but Jesus wanted to get to know him better and called him down from the tree in order to dine with him in his own home.
Many archaeologists have worked at old Jericho. Probably the most famous was a British lady by the name of Kathleen Kenyan. She excavated in Jericho from 1952 to 1958, right down to its Stone Age foundation, and she showed it to be the oldest known continuously occupied human settlement.
These days, it's possible to drive around the Israeli side of the Dead Sea. Starting at Jericho, the sealed road takes you past where the river Jordan flows into the Dead Sea and around to endedai. I say a sealed road because when I was first able to drive around this road, it was just dirt.
Today this is a nature reserve and a real oasis in the desert area, just a few meters away from the Dead Sea. Here at Engedai is the place where David came and he stayed in a cave. And he could easily have taken Saul's life when Saul came into this cave to relieve himself.
But nearby is a very fine spring of water where it is good to peel off on a hot day and bathe under the waterfall that was probably also used by David. There are also many date palms here. And, you know, Israel grows some of the best dates in the world.
They are the finest, I believe, to be found. Several kilometers further around the Dead Sea, we come to Qumran. This is where two shepherd boys were watching over the family goats.
They looked up and could see an opening in the cliff. You know it as boys do. They picked up stones and threw them at the opening.
It was a long way up, but finally one of the boys threw a stone that went into the cave and made a terrific noise that echoed around the nearby cliffs. The boys ran for their lives, but then wondered what made that noise. They climbed up the cliff and down into the cave.
And there they saw large ceramic pots, some broken by that stone. The ceramic jars contained skins wrapped around something they didn't recognize. They shared with their fathers their discovery, and the fathers came to investigate this scene.
On opening some of the skins, they found what we know today as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Men folks sold some of these in the marketplace for a few dollars. Today they're absolutely priceless for millions of dollars.
The Israelis would not sell these scrolls to you very soon. Most of the scrolls were purchased by Jews, and today at Jerusalem is a museum housing many of the scrolls. It is called the Shrine of the Book.
One of the scrolls is a complete book of Isaiah. It is very well preserved. It dates from around a century before Christ.
All told, they unraveled five books of Isaiah and nine books of Daniel. These were obviously the best loved books of the Bible. Well, who wrote these? It's believed that the Essenes also mentioned the Bible were those who wrote these precious books.
You know, it's very significant, for before these scrolls were found, our oldest manuscripts of the Old Testament were almost a thousand years younger. From the 9th century Ad. Daniel and Isaiah wrote much about the Messiah.
So up until the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, many scholars claimed that Isaiah and Daniel must have been written after Christ lived. You see, they didn't believe in prophecy. And both of these books predict the coming of Jesus the first time.
But now, with carbon dating and other dating procedures, the dead Scrolls go back at least a century before Christ. Isn't that remarkable? After World War II, many people doubted the existence of God and the accuracy of the Bible. But when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, many of these people had their questions answered and now believe in prophecy.
Our next presentation will take us to more of Israel, and I hope you can join us at that time. Please take time to visit our website, 3abnaustralia.org.au, that is, 3abnaustralia.org.au
Click on the listen button and find these programs and many more that I'm sure you'll be interested in. Until then, we pray that our Lord will bless you in health, strength, and a real joy in Him.
You've been listening to biblical wonders in the Middle East with Pastor David Curry. If you have any comments or questions, send an email to
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