The End Time Church: From the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright 2021 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.

Chapter 90

Finding the New Ark in the New Temple

People have not seen the Ark of the Covenant for over 2600 years, and have not had a Temple to Yahweh for almost 2000 years.

So what?

The first and second Temples were both destroyed. After the first Temple burned, seventy years passed without a Temple. After the second Temple burned, nineteen and a half centuries passed without a physical Temple.

That takes us up to now.

The Jews thought Hadrian was rebuilding the Temple when he was actually building a temple to Jupiter. Julian the Apostate did try to rebuild the Temple, and that effort got nowhere. Apparently apostates don’t make good Temple builders. So for all these centuries, there has been no physical Temple.

Like the physical Temple that was burned into oblivion, might the physical Ark no longer be relevant?

After the second Temple burned in 70, the Jews went to the synagogues with their “rabbis.”

And the Christians?

The early Christians were fine without a physical Temple. Most observed the Bible Feasts where they were, not at the Temple. Later, most Christians went with pagan Rome and wound up keeping the same days as the pagans, just renamed. No one was very concerned about not having a physical Temple or a physical Ark of the Covenant.

There is a future time when the Ark will not even be mentioned or remembered.

Jer 3
16) It shall come to pass, when you are multiplied and increased in the land, in those days,” says Yahweh, “they shall say no more, ‘The ark of the covenant of Yahweh!’ neither shall it come to mind; neither shall they remember it; neither shall they miss it; neither shall it be made any more.
17) At that time they shall call Jerusalem ‘The throne of Yahweh;’ and all the nations shall be gathered to it, to the name of Yahweh, to Jerusalem. Neither shall they walk any more after the stubbornness of their evil heart.

The Ark will not be mentioned or remembered because it represents the throne of Yahweh on earth. At the time of Jeremiah’s prophecy, the throne of Yahweh will be on earth.

But–

As you probably noticed, that hasn’t happened yet.

The Ark of the Covenant has been out of sight for over 2600 years. The second Temple that stood from 516 BCE until 70 CE functioned for nearly six centuries without the Ark. For the last 19+ centuries there hasn’t even been a Temple. Do we even need to wonder where the physical Ark is?

Originally the Ark in the Tabernacle contained the Ten Commandments, a pot of manna and Aaron’s rod. About four centuries later when Solomon put the Ark in the Temple, it held only the Ten Commandments. About five centuries after Solomon, when the second Temple was finished, the Ark itself was missing. About six centuries still later, Rome sacked Jerusalem, and then the Temple itself was gone.

Missing the manna and the rod, then missing the Ark, then missing the Temple –

Do we see a pattern there?

Yes, a pattern of decline.

In the wilderness, the cloud of Yahweh’s spirit came down into the Tabernacle. It rested there when Israel was camped, and rose up and led them when Israel moved. The spirit of Yahweh was right there with them, wherever they were.

Exod 40
34) Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle.
35) Moses wasn’t able to enter into the Tent of Meeting, because the cloud stayed on it, and Yahweh’s glory filled the tabernacle.
36) When the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward, throughout all their journeys;
37) but if the cloud wasn’t taken up, then they didn’t travel until the day that it was taken up.
38) For the cloud of Yahweh was on the tabernacle by day, and there was fire in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.

When Solomon finished building the first Temple, that cloud filled the building.

1 Kings 8
4) They brought up Yahweh’s ark, the Tent of Meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the Tent. The priests and the Levites brought these up.
5) King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel, who were assembled to him, were with him before the ark, sacrificing sheep and cattle, that could not be counted or numbered for multitude.
6) The priests brought in the ark of Yahweh’s covenant to its place, into the inner sanctuary of the house, to the most holy place, even under the cherubim’s wings.
7) For the cherubim spread their wings out over the place of the ark, and the cherubim covered the ark and its poles above.
8) The poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the holy place before the inner sanctuary; but they were not seen outside. They are there to this day.
9) There was nothing in the ark except the two stone tablets which Moses put there at Horeb, when Yahweh made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt.
10) It came to pass, when the priests had come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled Yahweh’s house,
11) so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud; for Yahweh’s glory filled Yahweh’s house.

In that same Temple but much later, Ezekiel was shown these abominations.

Eze 8
1) In the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, the Lord Yahweh’s hand fell on me there.
2) Then I saw, and behold, a likeness as the appearance of fire; from the appearance of his waist and downward, fire; and from his waist and upward, as the appearance of brightness, as it were glowing metal.
3) He stretched out the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my head; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and the sky, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the gate of the inner court that looks toward the north; where there was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy.
4) Behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, according to the appearance that I saw in the plain.
5) Then he said to me, “Son of man, lift up your eyes now the way toward the north.” So I lifted up my eyes the way toward the north, and saw, northward of the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry.
6) He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they do? Even the great abominations that the house of Israel commit here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? But you will again see yet other great abominations.”

Those abominations caused Yahweh to go far off from His sanctuary.

Eze 8
3) Now the cherubim stood on the right side of the house when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court.
4) Yahweh’s glory mounted up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of Yahweh’s glory.

18) Yahweh’s glory went out from over the threshold of the house and stood over the cherubim.
19) The cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up from the earth in my sight when they went out, with the wheels beside them. Then they stood at the door of the east gate of Yahweh’s house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.

Eze 11
1) Moreover the Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the east gate of Yahweh’s house, which looks eastward. Behold, twenty-five men were at the door of the gate; and I saw among them Jaazaniah the son of Azzur, and Pelatiah the son of Benaiah, princes of the people.
2) He said to me, “Son of man, these are the men who devise iniquity, and who give wicked counsel in this city;

21) But as for them whose heart walks after the heart of their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their way on their own heads,’ says the Lord Yahweh.”
22) Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, and the wheels were beside them. The glory of the God of Israel was over them above.
23) Yahweh’s glory went up from the middle of the city, and stood on the mountain which is on the east side of the city.

Yahweh went east to the Mount of Olives and left the Temple, left His sanctuary.

Soon that first Temple was burned. Yahweh was not there. He had left.

A second Temple was finished 70 years later, but the Ark was not in it.  Also the Bible never explicitly says that the cloud of Yahweh’s spirit filled the second Temple.

Yahweh Himself commanded Israel to build that Temple.

Hag 1
8) Go up to the mountain, bring wood, and build the house. I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified,” says Yahweh.

Zech 1
16) Therefore thus says Yahweh: “I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy. My house shall be built in it,” …

Nehemiah speaks of a joyful time in that second Temple.

Neh 12
40) So stood the two companies of those who gave thanks in the house of God, and I, and the half of the rulers with me;

43) They offered great sacrifices that day, and rejoiced; for God had made them rejoice with great joy; and the women also and the children rejoiced: so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off.

But there is no mention of Yahweh’s spirit – the cloud – filling the second temple as it had the Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple.

The Ark was not in the second Temple and apparently the cloud wasn’t there, either. And as stated, eventually the Temple itself was not there.

Again, we see a pattern of decline.

The Kingdom of Judah also saw a steady decline. The kingdom under David and then Solomon was a glorious kingdom. Nineteen kings later, that kingdom ended in destruction and deportation. After some of the Jews returned from captivity, they were again a nation in the Holy Land, but they were under Gentile kings. The Hasmoneans had a period of quasi-independence, but that ended when Rome conquered Jerusalem. Finally, Rome killed and captured most of the Jews there, so the Jews were no longer even a unified nation and most Jews were not even in the Holy Land.

Steady decline.

Saul’s life had a similar pattern.

First, Yahweh’s spirit came mightily on Saul.

1 Samuel 10
6) Then Yahweh’s Spirit will come mightily on you, then you will prophesy with them and will be turned into another man.

10) When they came there to the hill, behold, a band of prophets met him; and the Spirit of God came mightily on him [Saul], and he prophesied among them.

But when Saul broke the first Commandment by putting himself first instead of God, Yahweh’s spirit departed from Saul and went to David.

1 Samuel 16
13) Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the middle of his brothers. Then Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
14) Now Yahweh’s Spirit departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from Yahweh troubled him.

This resulted in Saul and his dynasty, or family, losing his kingdom, even though Jonathan his son, who would have been the next king, was a kindred spirit with David.

In all those examples we see a pattern of decline, in the Ark and the Temple; in Judah’s kingdom; and in the personal story of the first king of Israel, Saul.

What’s missing there, in all that decline?

What’s missing is Perfection, not gradually getting farther and farther away from Yahweh God Almighty.

Matt 5
48) Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Yahweh’s spirit had left Saul and moved to David. Finally that spirit was on a descendant of David.

Isaiah 42
42) Behold, my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights: I have put my Spirit on him. He will bring justice to the nations.

Isaiah 61
1) The Lord Yahweh’s Spirit is on me, because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good news to the humble. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to those who are bound,

The cloud that was with Israel in the wilderness and in Solomon’s Temple came as a dove.

Luke 3
21) Now when all the people were baptized, Yeshua also had been baptized and was praying. The sky was opened,
22)  and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form like a dove on him; and a voice came out of the sky, saying “You are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased.”

A few years later the cloud also came on the flock that followed that descendant of David.

Acts 2
4) They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other languages, as the Spirit gave them the ability to speak.

16) But this is what has been spoken through the prophet Joel:
17) ‘It will be in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.  Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams.
18) Yes, and on my servants and on my handmaidens in those days, I will pour out my Spirit, and they will prophesy.

This flock is the new Temple. This is where the cloud is, on God’s servants and handmaids, except the spirit did not come as a dark cloud, but as bright tongues of fire.

Acts 2
1) Now when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all with one accord in one place.
2) Suddenly there came from the sky a sound like the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
3) Tongues like fire appeared and were distributed to them, and one sat on each of them.
4) They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other languages, as the Spirit gave them the ability to speak.

A new temple, with a cloud in it, except it was tongues. And what is the focal point of this new Temple?

The focal point of this Temple is the new Ark of the Covenant.

Remember that the Ark was just a wooden box overlaid with gold. A fancy box, to be sure, but it was just a box, something to hold the Ten Commandments, Aaron’s rod, and a pot of manna. The new Temple, with the cloud, has a new Ark or vessel of the Covenant. And this new Ark also contains the Ten Commandments, the rod, and the manna. This new Ark is at the heart of the new Temple, right there with the mercy seat.

The End Time Church: From the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright 2021 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.

Chapter 89

Who Hid the Ark?

The Babylonians didn’t destroy the Ark when they burned the Temple. They didn’t take the Ark to Babylon, either. Yet since that time, the Ark has remained hidden.

Some “rabbis” wrote that Josiah said to hide the Ark in a tunnel —

Under the Temple.

It’s a verse we went over before.

2Chr 35
3) He [Josiah] said to the Levites who taught all Israel, who were holy to Yahweh, “Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel built. There shall no more be a burden on your shoulders. Now serve Yahweh your God, and his people Israel.

Nothing’s said about a tunnel or hiding there, but Jewish religious rulers say this was a command from Josiah to hide the Ark in a subterranean Temple tunnel.

Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament, 2 Ch 35:3
Several Rabbins regard it as a command to remove the ark from its place in the most holy place into some subterranean chamber of the temple, so as to secure its safety in the event of the threatened destruction of the temple taking place. But this hypothesis needs no refutation, since it in no way corresponds to the words used.

“…in no way corresponds to the words used” — In other words, the verse doesn’t say that at all. That doesn’t mean that Josiah didn’t hide the Ark, but he didn’t say it in that passage.

K&D goes on:
Most ancient and modern commentators, on the other hand, suppose that the holy ark had, during the reigns of the godless Manasseh and Amon, either been removed by them from its place, or taken away from the most holy place, from a desire to protect it from profanation, and hidden somewhere; and that Josiah calls upon the Levites to bring it back again to its place. Certainly this idea is favoured by the circumstance that, just as the book of the law, which should have been preserved in [by] the ark of the covenant, had been lost, and was only recovered when the temple was being repaired, so the ark also may have been removed from its place.

So if the priests had removed the Ark in a previous time of trouble, then they might also have moved the Ark because of Babylon’s attack.

Based on that premise, there are multiple ideas on the location of the Ark.

Some claim that the Ark is tucked away in Iraq, the modern site of ancient Babylon. Apocryphal 2 Esdras, apocryphal meaning false, discusses the destruction of the first Temple. It says “the ark of our covenant has been plundered.”

That statement indicates that the Babylonians took the Ark.

However –

2 Esdras is said to have been written not during the time of the first Temple, but after the New Testament was written. Since 2 Esdras was written long after Babylon’s siege, it has no historical value discussing an event seven centuries earlier. The writer may have assumed that the Ark was taken in the attack, but nothing in the Bible shows that Nebuchadnezzar took the Ark to Babylon/Iraq.

Besides, why would Yahweh want to leave his earthly throne in Babylon?

Rev 14:8 WEB
8) Another, a second angel, followed, saying, “Babylon the great has fallen, which has made all the nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her sexual immorality.”

Whether literal or symbolic, Babylon is not a likely place for God’s throne.

Others claim that the Ark is in Ethiopia, in a Christian church, taken there by the Queen of Sheba during her visit to Solomon. But Josiah put the Ark back into the Temple more than three centuries after that. Plus having the Ark in Ethiopia brings up the same type question as with Iraq.

Did Yahweh want His throne taken to Africa?

The apocryphal 2 Maccabees places the Ark on Mt. Nebo, the mountain where Moses looked over into the land of Canaan and was buried.

2 Maccabees 2:4-7 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition)
1) One finds in the records that the prophet Jeremiah ordered those who were being deported to take some of the fire, as has been mentioned,
2) and that the prophet, after giving them the law, instructed those who were being deported not to forget the commandments of the Lord, or to be led astray in their thoughts on seeing the gold and silver statues and their adornment.
3) And with other similar words he exhorted them that the law should not depart from their hearts.
4) It was also in the same document that the prophet, having received an oracle, ordered that the tent and the ark should follow with him, and that he went out to the mountain where Moses had gone up and had seen the inheritance of God.
5) Jeremiah came and found a cave-dwelling, and he brought there the tent and the ark and the altar of incense; then he sealed up the entrance.
6) Some of those who followed him came up intending to mark the way, but could not find it.
7) When Jeremiah learned of it, he rebuked them and declared: “The place shall remain unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy.

If the Ark was hidden in Mt. Nebo, this again would put Ark out of the Holy Land.

Ps 9:11 WEB
11) Sing praises to Yahweh, who dwells in Zion, and declare among the people what he has done.

Ps 50:2 WEB
2) Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.

If the Ark is in Mt. Nebo, that is out of the Holy Land. Iraq, Ethiopia and Mt. Nebo are all lands of the Gentiles. There is no reason to think that Yahweh wanted the Ark, His throne, to rest for nearly three millennia in a Gentile land. That leads to the conclusion that if the Ark is hidden, it would be in the Holy Land. We must also remember that Maccabees are apocryphal books.

The Talmud also says that the Ark was hidden.

Surely it has been taught: When the ark was hidden, there was hidden with it the bottle containing the Manna, and that containing the sprinkling water, the staff of Aaron, with its almonds and blossoms, and the chest which the Philistines had sent as a gift to the God of Israel, (B. Yoma 52b).

The key phrase there is “when the ark was hidden.” Near the end of the time of the first Temple, the Jews had ample time to hatch a plan to hide the Ark.

Huldah’s prophecy to Josiah, discussed in the previous chapter, showed that the Temple would be destroyed. That gave several decades from that prophecy to plan for removing the Ark.

The Babylonians carried the Temple vessels to Babylon at two different times.

2Kgs 24:10-13 WEB
10) At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up to Jerusalem, and the city was besieged.
11) Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to the city, while his servants were besieging it;
12) and Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, he, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his officers: and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign.
13) He carried out there all the treasures of the house of Yahweh, and the treasures of the king’s house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold, which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of Yahweh, as Yahweh had said.

Jehoiachin was the next to last king of Judah, deposed about a decade before the final destruction of the kingdom. As already cited, when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple in c. 586, he carried away everything that was left.

2Chr 36
18) All the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of Yahweh, and the treasures of the king, and of his princes, all these he brought to Babylon.
19) They burnt the house of God, and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels of it.

After Jehoiachin’s fall and the loss of some Temple items, that decade gave ample time to lay plans to remove the Ark before the final destruction.

Talmud references cause some to strongly believe the Ark is hidden under the Temple site.

“Where is the Ark of the Covenant?”, by Thomas S. McCall, 1997 Zola Levitt Letter, https://www.levitt.com/essays/ark
Rabbi Shlomo Goren and Rabbi Yehuda Getz, the rabbis in charge of the Western Wall area, are convinced that the Ark has been hidden in a cave in the Temple Mount directly under the site of the Holy of Holies, since the time of King Josiah…

Rabbi Getz believes that in 1982 he was very close, within 40 feet, to finding the cave in which the Ark resides. He was conducting a search in an old tunnel that had been filled with the debris of centuries, which runs perpendicular to the Western Wall and under the Temple Mount. However, when the Moslems discovered that there were diggings being conducted under the Dome of the Rock, they threatened a general riot and the diggings were stopped. The rabbi explains that, for the sake of maintaining peace with their Moslem neighbors, the Israelis had to reseal the entrance to the tunnel, and it remains blocked up to this day.

Archaeologist Leen Ritmeyer has done research on the Temple Mount and inside the Dome of the Rock. He says he has established the site of the Holy of Holies.

jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ark-of-the-convenant
He claims to have found the spot on the Mount where the Holy of Holies was located during the First Temple period. In the precise center of that spot is a section of bedrock cut out in dimensions that may match those of the Ark as reported in Exodus…Based on his findings, Ritmeyer has postulated that the Ark may be buried deep inside the Temple Mount.

Another researcher claims the lost Ark of the Covenant is not lost at all.

Jerusalem Post, “The Enigma of the Lost Ark of the Covenant”, By Harry Moskoff, September 10, 2017
I wrote a book (“The ARK Report”) based on 25 years of research on the Jewish perspective, where I quote primary sources from the Bible and the Talmud, with Midrashic and Haggadic references throughout. What I found is something compelling. I found that the Ark was not “lost” as many assume. In fact, it has been situated in the same place for all this time. Reminiscent of that great Disney movie with Nicholas Cage, National Treasure, this particular priceless Jewish treasure is about 4 stories (15m) underneath the present-day surface of the Temple Mount, to the southwest of the Dome of the Rock. Any biblical archaeologist worth his/her salt will tell you that there are over 45 known tunnels underneath the Temple Mount, with several entrances that may lead to this subterranean area…

The fact is, approximately 35 years before the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BC, King Josiah ordered that the Ark be brought into a special (what I call) “off-site” chamber that King Solomon had built as part of the original plan for the Temple, as found in a special Temple scroll that was given to him by his father King David, and the prophets Samuel and Nathan (II Chronicles 35:3). After happening upon an ancient Torah scroll of his ancestors, the righteous King Josiah foresaw that the Temple would be destroyed, and ordered the Ark’s placement into this secret chamber well before Jerusalem was even being threatened. Nobody knew that the Holy of Holies would then be empty, except for the King himself, the High Priest at that time, and some other priests that helped place it into the chamber below…

The Rambam (Maimonides) quotes the Talmud in a number of places that state that the Ark was buried “in its place” and for “generations after generations,” and “to this very day” (I Kings 8:8) in the warren of tunnels beneath the Temple Mount. In fact, according to my theory, directly beneath the Holy of Holies.

The Temple Institute, dedicated to building a third Temple, says that the Ark is hidden, but not lost, because they know where it is.

Temple Institute, “Where Is the Ark of the Covenant Located?” https://templeinstitute.org/frequently-asked-questions/
In reality, the expression “lost” ark is not an accurate description for the Jewish people’s point of view – because we have always known exactly where it is. So the Ark is “Hidden,” and hidden quite well, but it is not lost…. This location is recorded in our sources, and today, there are those who know exactly where this chamber is. And we know that the ark is still there, undisturbed, and waiting for the day when it will be revealed.

The key phrase there is “waiting for the day when it will be revealed.”

David wanted to build the first Temple as a place to house the Ark. If the Ark should be found, that would give enormous impetus to the drive to build a third Temple.

Let’s summarize.

1. Was the Ark destroyed by the Babylonians?

• No. They even carried out pieces of brass so they certainly would have preserved a gold covered chest had they found it.

2. Was the Ark carried to Babylon?

• No. Since what the Chaldeans took is carefully listed, taking the Ark would certainly have been mentioned. It is not.

3. Was the Ark secretly carried to another nation, like Ethiopia or Iraq/Babylon?

• No. The Ark belonged in Israel. Just as it did not stay with the Philistines, it was not meant to stay in Ethiopia or Babylon.

If the Ark was not destroyed, or taken to a Gentile country, then where could it possibly be?

1. It is hidden in Israel.

But there is one more alternative.

Like the Temple that was twice burned and has been gone for nearly 2000 years, might the physical Ark no longer be relevant?