The Ark of the Covenant

What is the Ark of the Covenant and why were the Nazis so desperate to find it in the Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark movie? What happened to it after Moses and the Israelites wandered around with it for many years in the desert? What is the rest of the story?

History records that God made a special covenant with the children of Israel through His servant Moses. He promised good to them and their children for generations if they obeyed Him and His laws; but He always warned of despair, punishment, and dispersion if they were to disobey. As a sign of His covenant He had the Israelites make a box according to His own design, in which to place the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments. This box, or chest, was called an “ark” and was made of acacia wood overlaid with gold. The Ark was to be housed in the inner sanctum of the tabernacle in the desert and eventually in the Temple when it was built in Jerusalem. This chest is known as the Ark of the Covenant.

What happened to the Ark of the Covenant is a question that has fascinated theologians, Bible students, and archeologists for centuries. In the eighteenth year of his reign, King Josiah of Judah ordered the caretakers of the Ark of the Covenant to return it to the temple in Jerusalem. That is the last time the ark’s location is mentioned in the Scriptures. Forty years later, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon captured Jerusalem and raided the temple. Less than ten years after that, he returned, took what was left in the temple, and then burnt it and the city to the ground. So what happened to the ark? Was it taken by Nebuchadnezzar? Was it destroyed with the city? Or was it removed and hidden safely away, as evidently happened when Pharaoh Shishak of Egypt raided the temple during the reign of Solomon’s son Rehoboam? If Shishak had managed to take the Ark, then why did Josiah ask the Levites to return it? If the Ark was in Egypt - as the storyline of Raiders of the Lost Ark would have us believe - the Levites would not have possessed it and therefore could not have returned it. It's location remains unknown to this day.

The story of Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea as he escaped Egypt has always held a certain fascination for me. I take most Biblical stories as being based in facts. What really happened there as Moses fled Egypt with the Israelites carrying the Ark?

The Israelites had been quite happy living in Egypt under the benevolent rule of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, even voluntarily helping him build a new capital city. Egypt was at its spiritual zenith in this brief time. But the traditional war-loving Egyptian military and controlling priesthood saw to the premature demise of his kingdom as well as the subsequent rule of his son Tutankhamen before rolling things back to the way they were under the militaristic rule of Pharaoh Ramses who moved quickly to enslave any Hebrews living in Egypt.

The Ark of the Covenant was gift to humanity used for sacred warfare to broadcast thoughts of harmony and peace. In the right hands the Ark could be used for good, but in the wrong hands it could be used to cause chaos and destruction. Hitler was aware of this historical fact. When the Hebrews decided that the hijacked Egyptian rulership could no longer be trusted to use the Ark for good, they decided to remove it from Egypt, using it for their own safe passage back to their homeland, otherwise saving it for some future time.

Moses was one of God's sacred warriors. He was a high-level initiate of the Egyptian mystery schools and a gifted intuitive, skilled at using the Ark for peaceful purposes. With Moses in the lead, a procession of Hebrew, Cretan, and Egyptian refugees fled the rule of Ramses and the city of Heliopolis where the Ark had been stored. The earth was under severe stress at this time due to a periodic cosmic event, so it was very unclear as to how the Israelites were going to travel in a time of horrendous weather and earthquakes. The group confidently let the Ark show them the way through the intuition of Moses, though the course seemed extremely doubtful from the outset.

It was the profound faith in the direction of Moses that saved the day. When they reached where the Red Sea should have been, it was not there. A planetary body, which we call Planet X today, was making a close enough pass to earth that, not only was it wrecking havoc with the planet's weather, but its gravitational pull lifted the Red Sea temporarily out of its basin. With the Ark aglow to show the way, the refugees scurried across the empty basin just in time before the chariots of Ramses' army, in hot pursuit, caught up to them.

Ramses wanted the Ark back more than he wanted to capture the escaping refugees, knowing that without it his dominance in Egypt would be in dire jeopardy. Closing quickly on the Israelites, Ramses in his lead chariot, hesitated before crossing the emptied seabed, then along with his great army was drowned by a great wall of water as the Red Sea's basin refilled at just the last moment to save the Israelites and escaping Egyptians. Was it by the powerful intention of Moses and the Ark that such a profound miracle occurred?

Moses continued to lead this group through the desert for several years. Because of the turbulence in the weather and earthquakes caused by Planet X, it was unsafe to build structures for quite some time. The Ark would be used for good many centuries after the Hebrew tribes finally resettled in their homeland, including by Joshua at the Battle of Jericho. It would be captured for one seven-month period by the Philistines before they returned it, for they did not understand its power and suffered great negative afflictions because of it. Misuse of the ark's energetic forces could have disastrous consequences for someone with bad intentions. The Indiana Jones movie made this very clear. Because of its power, the Ark has been secreted away for more than two thousand years until such time as it can again be used for sacred warfare by the good intentions of God's own warriors. I sense that time is coming soon.