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. Welcome to our presentation today, and I'm going to share with you some more interesting items from the Middle East and also review some of the past presentations. In one of our earlier presentations, we took you to the land of Egypt.
Let's revisit Egypt again and go down to the southernmost city, Aswan. Aswen has a number of very fine hotels. Due to the fact that many Europeans love to come here in the European winter, you can't blame them.
It's not so hot and the days are predictably sunny and warm. Clouds and rains are very rare in this part of Egypt, so we can understand why many European tourists come here in their European winter. But during that time, one living in Europe may not see the sun for two or three months.
One of the places to visit Adaswan is the temple of Kanum. That's spelt KNUMB. This is the deity of this cataract district, a god of fertility, which was also symbolized by the Ram.
As mentioned, Kanum was the god of fertility to the ancient Egyptians, and the ruins of this temple remind us that the sheep god was just one of 2500 gods that the ancient Egyptians worshipped. When the Jews were taken captive to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar, many fled to Egypt and a whole colony of them came to join other Jews who'd already established themselves at Aswen. They set up their colony on one of the two islands that are in the Nile River at Aswen.
One was Kitchener Island, but the one they settled on was Elephantine Island. While some records were found in Babylon, there was a scarcity of Persian records. One of the reasons being the weather in Persia was not very good for preserving ancient written records that were written on papyrus and on vellum or leather.
Archaeologists came to Aswan in the early part of the 20th century and thought that they might find some preserved records from this Jewish colony. They were almost ready to give up their search when several went into an old caretaker's hut here. They were rather disappointed as they saw a number of old crocodile carcasses.
However, as I believe Providence designed it, one of the archaeologists tripped and fell on a crocodile. The skin was very brittle, and when he fell on, the carcass had burst open and out fell many papyrus writings. This must have been one of the best falls in history.
These papyrus writings were found to go back 2500 years to the Persian period. And you know what? They helped to establish the dates and writings of Ezra and Nehemiah, two of the books of the Bible. The archaeologists then opened up more crocodile carcasses and discovered more papyrus writings, well over 150 altogether.
These became very important. And the date of 457 BC did you get that? 457 BC. Could now be firmly established.
The date was the commencement time for the predictions mentioned in the Book of Daniel. Let's have a look at one of these. And he writes, 70 weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation, for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy.
Well, here is a wonderful prophecy that in 70 weeks time, israel were to be ready for the first coming of Christ. If we convert these weeks to days, then 70 weeks times seven days in a week gives us the figure of 490 days. Many Bible scholars believe that in biblical prophecy, and only in prophecy, a day is the equivalent of a year.
So in this case, here is a prophecy from Daniel that goes for 490 years. How do we know the commencement of this period of time, 490 years? Notice again in Daniel nine, verse 25. Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the prince, there shall be seven weeks and 62 weeks.
The street shall be built again, and the wall even in troublest times. The books of Nezra and Nehemiah in the Bible record that the three separate decrees were given by three different Persian kings to the Israelites to return from their captivity to Babylon and to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, and also the temple which were destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar 70 years earlier. It's well established and also through the Elephantine Papyrus that 457 BC was the date that Ardax Xerxes gave the final and most effective decree for the Jews to return and to rebuild Jerusalem.
He also gave money and written permission to Ezra to complete the building program. So the credibility of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were further assisted by the finding of the elephantine Papyri at Aswen just over 100 years ago. It's amazing how often the archaeologists have confirmed the Bible writings.
Let's look at Daniel's prediction more closely. He recorded know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the prince, there should be seven weeks and 62 weeks. Why does he say there shall be seven weeks and 62 weeks until Messiah the prince? Why not say 69 weeks? Why does he divide the time period? A seven weeks in biblical prophetic language is 49 years.
And this is the approximate amount of time it took to finish the rebuilding program at Jerusalem. After that, it was another 62 weeks, or 434 years until Christ began his ministry. So right on time, Jesus began his ministry.
But the prophecy doesn't end with 69 weeks or 483 years. Notice there are a total of 70 weeks or 490 years. The prophecy goes on to say, and after the 62 weeks, Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself.
And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. But in the middle of the week, he shall bring an end to sacrifice.
And offering this prophecy clearly shows a total of 490 days, or years. The last week is seven years. And in the middle of this period, which of course is three and a half years, jesus would die on the cross.
In the middle of the week, the sanctuary services on earth would come to their end, for they all pointed to Jesus and his death on Calvary. Jesus ministry began when he was 30, and unfortunately ended three and a half years later when he died on the cross. Daniel predicts this event so accurately, but what happened at the end of the 70 weeks of 490 years? Stephen, a newly appointed deacon in the church, was stoned to death.
This tragedy marked the end of Israel being a special people to God and marked the taking of the Gospel to the Gentile nations. People who accepted Jesus as savior and son of God were now the true Israel of God. A new era had commenced.
This new Israel included both converted Jews and converted Gentiles. To me, and I'm sure it is also to you a wonderful fact that the Elephantine Papyrus were found and helped to confirm God's wonderful predictions, as Peter in the second Epistle, chapter one of verse 19 records. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.
Well, while we are still in Egypt, let's travel out to Mount Sinai once again. At the foot of the mountain, almost lessening against it, is a monastery called St. Catherine's Monastery.
St. Catherine's monasteries were built by the order of Emperor Justinian I. He reigned in Rome from 527 to 565 and had built on this traditional site beneath Mount Sinai, where, according to scripture, god spoke to the prophet Moses from the burning bush, as recorded in the Bible in the book called Exodus.
And in chapter three, this monastery is, interestingly enough, a home for a very old library in which was found what is called the Codex Sinaticus. Codex Sinaticus, or Sinai Bible, is one of the four great ancient unseal codeices. These are handwritten copies of the Christian Bible in Greek.
And this codex is really a historical treasure. It's an Alexandrian text type manuscript, written in what we call unseal letters on parchment and dated in the mid fourth century. Unseal means that it was written in all capital letters, all joined together.
Scholarship considers the Codex Sinatics to be one of the most important Greek texts of the New Testament, along with the Codex Vaticanus, which was written about the same time. This codex came to the attention of scholars in 1844 at St. Catherine's Menorah Monastery, with further material discovered in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Although parts of the codex are scattered across four libraries around the world, most of the manuscript is held today in the British Library in London, where it is on public display. Since its discovery study, the Codex Arniaticus has proven to be useful to scholars for critical studies of biblical texts. And, you know, the interesting fact is that when compared with other Greek biblical writings of the third century Ad.
It's almost identical. This continues to give credence to the Bible as it continues to be among some of the best preserved writings from so many years ago. St.
Catherine's Monastery is operated by the Eastern Orthodox churches. By previous appointment, it is possible to visit the monastery, and you can even stay overnight. Sometimes the monastery is protected by a very high wall that protects the buildings from would be robbers.
At one time, a monk from the monastery spent most of his life building a staircase up the mountain. Today is called the Steps of Penitence. It is still used today by tourists, but they are warned to travel up the steps only in the daytime and also if the traveler has strong knees and legs.
Many of the stairs are quite deep, and climbing up them may cause many difficulties for some people. Mount Sinai is called Jubile Musa, or Mountain of Moses, and is generally accepted today as the place where Israel camped and heard God give the Ten Commandments and where Moses received them on tables of stone. There is another mountain in Saudi Arabia called the Mountain of Laws.
One pseudo archaeologist, now deceased, claimed that this mountain is where Moses received the Laws of God, which is why it is called the Mountain of Laws. On the top of the mountain, there are blackened rocks, which are claimed to be blackened when God came down on the mountain to give the Ten Commandments. Well, there are two problems with this point of view.
The first, it is called the Mountain of Laws in Arabic. In Arabic laws means almonds. Around this mountain are many almond groves.
The second point is the blackened top of the mountain. Most mountains and even high hills in the Middle East have the same blackened appearance, mainly caused by lightning strikes over the centuries and millennia. A typical case of this is at Borsapa, or Burs Nimrod, where King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonian fame built a ziggurat.
When visiting this, you'll see how the topmost bricks have all turned black so really there's no credibility in mount laws of Saudi Arabia being the mountain of Moses. Let us now cross over the Mediterranean Sea and stop off at the island of Cyprus. Today this large island is split between the countries of Greece and Turkey and unfortunately this split has caused many wars.
Back in 45 Ad the apostles Paul and Barnabas arrived in Cyprus to spread the Christian doctrine and they succeeded in converting the pro consul Sergius Paulus to Christianity at the town called Pephhos. This means that Cyprus thereby became the first country to be governed by a Christian. Travelling over this island, the third largest in the Mediterranean after Sicily and Sardinia one gets an idea of the great distances that Paul and Barnabas had to travel.
The distance from Selamus to Paphos and Cyprus is 160 even by car. It took us several hours to do this distance. These distances are even more so when you travel through Turkey, which is called Asia Minor in the New Testament.
Paul and Barnabas would surely have to be very fit to cover the great distances. Apart from fitness they had the Gospel message to share with the world and this they did with God's blessings in travel and in preservation. After being at Paphos they traveled to Turkey and after spending a little time at Perga they traveled to Antioch in Pasidia.
This is a journey of 191. You can visit remarkable ruins in this old city while nearby is a modern city where many people reside. There are the foundations of a large Christian church here.
It was here that Paul was invited to preach to the locals on the Sabbath day. He shared with Jews and Gentiles the story of redemption. When he had finished and most of the Jews had left the synagogue the Gentiles who remained asked that Paul might preach on the next Sabbath and Acts 13 and verse 14 records that on the next Sabbath almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God.
Wouldn't it be great if in these times we could get whole cities interested in hearing God's word? However, a strange thing happened. The Jews became jealous and opposed the very message that Paul and Barnabas were sharing with their city. While the Gentiles were so pleased to hear that they were a part of a new Israel and accepted Christ their savior, the Jews raised up persecution by the town leaders against these apostles.
You know Satan is always against the Gospel of Jesus being preached and even more so in these days in which you and I are living after being expelled from Antioch. I love what it says in Acts 15 they shook the dust off their feet against them and came to Iconium and the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. It must have been a great pleasure to leave behind many Gentile converts in Antioch and Passidia and it's probable that these people build the quite large church with its foundations that are still intact today.
Unfortunately, there's no Christian church there today, for Islam has taken over this area of Turkey. In our presentations in the past, we talked about some of the prophecies of the Old Testament being accurately fulfilled in a number of areas. Let's remind ourselves of some of these.
In both Isaiah and Jeremiah we have specific predictions concerning Babylon. Notice Isaiah 1319 to 20 and Babylon the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans pride will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It'll never be inhabited, nor will it be settled from generation, nor will the Arabians pitch tents there, nor will the shepherds pitch their tents there.
This is a remarkable predictions. This great city of 2500 years ago would be no more. Nobody would live inside it.
This great city has been a ruin for over 2000 years. The Persians were the first to bring some destruction, followed by Alexander the Great, who actually died in Babylon following his challenges to faraway India. After Alex's death, his general responsible for the area had ideas of removing Babylon to another site.
However, by the time the path in Empire ruled the region and 141 years before Christ, babylon was already deserted and forgotten. This jewel of the world was destroyed and the biblical predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah were dramatically fulfilled. I've been to Babylon a number of times, but today the destruction is even more evident with the wars in Iraq, especially when the Americans joined in.
Tanks and heavy vehicles have almost completely obliterated most of the old ruins. Saddam Hussein built a palace overlooking the ruins because, you know, he wanted to be the second Nebuchadnezzar and his palace was built on top of some of the ruins. This palace has been completely ransacked and looted.
The prophecies were so accurate, and we can put our trust in God's word. Another prediction we looked at was from old Egypt. One visit I made to Egypt, the pilot flew our plane over the city of Luxur and gave the passengers some very good views of the Karnak temple and the area around the city.
I was so pleased to also photograph some of the dried tributaries that once flowed into the Nile and produced great quantities of papyrus plants. We get our word paper from these ancient plants. The stalks of the plant were hammered and rolled and formed into sheets of papyrus.
When dried, the sheets were finished and were covered with hieroglyphical writings. This writing was quite different from what we use today and very different from the cuneiform from Babylonia. Hieroglyphica is often called picture writing.
Even the walls of the tombs, the kings and the nobles, are covered in hieroglyphics, or picture writing. Why did God prophesy against the papyrus plant and also against the rivers that flowed into the Nile? Let me share again with you the prediction. This is from Isaiah 19, verses six and seven.
The rivers will turn foul. The brooks of defense will be emptied and dried up. The reeds and rushes will wither the papyrus reeds by the river, by the mouth of river, and everything sown by the river will wither be driven away and be no more.
Did you notice those words? The rivers dried up and the reeds will wither and be no more. Why did God have Isaiah write this prediction? Normally, predictions are made against nations or individual people. Why then, against this papyrus reed? This is quite an unusual but an outstanding prediction.
It's true that I have photographed some of these dried rivers that carried an abundance of water at one time which fed the papyrus reeds. Indeed, they're not carrying water to the Nile anymore, and there are no more papyrus reeds growing there. Why should this have happened? As I mentioned in an earlier presentation, the answer is found in the basement of the Egyptian Museum.
Very few people allowed in this basement, but the late Dr. Siegfried Horn, under whom I studied archaeology, has been there. He reads hieroglyphics and in fact received his doctorate in the discipline of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
He said that the basement of the museum is almost full of hieroglyphics that are totally pornographic. Did you get that? The basement is full of pornographic hieroglyphics. Those on display in the museum are not pornographic, but the basement is full of those that are.
Did God see that this was happening and did not wish for this evil to be perpetrated further than Egypt? Was God putting a stop to this sin and evil? We don't know for sure, but Dr. Horn believed this to be so. Whatever the unusual prediction about the rivers drying up and the reeds withering, this is a remarkable fulfillment.
Now, to finish our presentation today, we'll go back to the land of Turkey. This was known in the new testament of the Bible as Asia Minor. It was also home to the ancient Hidites, who are mentioned 64 times in the Bible.
A very important museum is the Anatolian Archaeological Museum in Ankara. Here's a very good display of discoveries made from Hittite towns. This is interesting when you know that a hundred years ago, many were very critical of the Bible because it even mentioned the Hittites.
Nothing had been discovered of these people. And many wrote that these were just a mythological people because there were no discoveries. But then at Khakemish, a southern Turkey town on the border of Syria, were ruins of the Hittites.
And these was discovered about a hundred years ago. And since then, more than 30 other ancient cities were found in Turkey. And this museum reveals many of the artifacts that have been discovered.
Karkemis was the location of important battle about 605 BC. Between the Babylonians and the Egyptians. And this is mentioned in the Bible in Jeremiah 46 and verse two.
Displayed in the museum are bracelets and other jewelry in gold and silver and precious stones. There are some reliefs of priests, worshipping and the people who appear to be bowing to their kings. Yes, the Hittites were real people and not mythological at all.
About four or 5 hours by bus, northeast of Ankara, we arrived at more Hittite ruins. Here at Hatchasas and Boguskali, there's a fortress wall that protected the Hittite sanctuary. There are several gates leading into the sanctuary.
There's a tunnel built of rocks laid one on top of the other. And this is another entrance. From the outside of the fortress to the inside, there's no mortar at all.
And the tunnel was quite an achievement for the ancients. It must be at least 100 meters long. I must admit that I traveled through that tunnel little faster when I realized that there was no mortar holding those thousands of rocks together.
So much for the Hittites being mythological characters. Long before our journey, probably over 3000 years ago, the Hittites had also come to Cappadocia and dug deep caverns where they lived in comparative safety for some time. They actually cut out two stories of homes and tunnels for their homes.
With all of this background, it is quite amazing that for many years scholars did not believe that the Hittites existed. They believed the Bible. Just speaking of some mythological people, even though it mentioned these people over 60 times.
As I mentioned earlier, it was a century ago that the first Hittite town was found in Kalkamesh on the border of Turkey and Syria. God allows some discoveries by archaeologists and his historians to confirm its accuracy. I trust that you've enjoyed this presentation today and gained more about the word of God.
Please look up our website, 3abnaustralia.org.au for more amazing facts. Press on, listen and you will find a library of presentations, including mine.
May many abundant blessings from above be poured out on you today. 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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or call us within Australia on 024-973-3456. We'd love to hear from you. You you have been listening to a production of Three ABN Australia radio.
