March 28, 2024

I have to admit, when I first heard that 750 people were massacred in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion church complex in Aksum, Ethiopia – my first thoughts were disbelief, and wait a minute, isn’t that where people claim the Ark of the Covenant is kept? The Ethiopian Church has long claimed that the Ark is kept safe underneath their church. Graham Hancock and other researchers concur there is a significant chance the Ethiopians are correct and that the Ark – the one we may know best from the hit 1981 movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark” – has really been kept in Aksum for thousands of years.

In one of my previous books, I wrote many years ago: “The Royal Chronicles of Ethiopia tell us that Prince Menelik was the son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon of Israel.  Menelik was raised by Solomon after the queen left, and was educated by Temple priests until age 19, when (as the Ethiopian national epic, the Kebra-Nagast tells us) the Queen of Sheba died, and the Ethiopian court sent for Menelik to come to Ethiopia as king.  Their story claims that Solomon made Menelik a replica of the Ark, as he would be too far from Jerusalem to worship at the Temple.  But Menelik was concerned with the growing apostasy in Israel, and (allegedly) with the help of like-minded priests, switched the replica with the real Ark and took it to what he believed would be a safer location in Ethiopia.” As the Ark has never officially been found, perhaps it was moved to Ethiopia as many claim.

While the following scenario is mostly speculation, there aren’t many reasons that could justify dragging almost a thousand people out of a church a murdering them – but this did happen recently in Aksum, as Wikipedia and many other web sites can confirm. The people there were annihilated so completely that we don’t even know for sure what day the event took place, though an estimated range over three days in late December 2020 has been narrowed down by Belgian analysts as of a few days ago.

And this is no ordinary church where the killings wiped everyone out, it may be where the Ark of the Covenant has been kept. Could this holy artefact – which allegedly guarantees victory for whatever army carries it – be the real reason for the massacre? If the massacre wasn’t just retaliation against Christians – if the location was key and the purpose was to secretly obtain the Ark of the Covenant – why do so in the final days of 2020?

Some believe the Ark is needed to complete the Third Temple in Jerusalem. If this is the motivation for stealing it, perhaps we should be worried about the antichrist coming to power. Though I have no particular reason to assume we are at that point (mid-tribulation) it provides one of the best potential explanations for stealing the Ark.

Yet another reason could be to bring it into a very crucial battle against overwhelming odds. Just like I first learned in the Indiana Jones movies, Adolf Hitler really did believe ancient relics were important, and he really did send teams around the world to gather evidence and artefacts. The Nazis’ Ahnenerbe wasted plenty of time, effort and money from Peru to Tibet and they absolutely looked for the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. Who else might want such things today?

Hollywood made us wonder what might have happened differently in WWII if Germany had access to something that offered a divine guarantee of victory on the battlefield (the Bible tells us the Jews believed this in 1 Samuel 4:1.) There are some who believe America is at the brink of civil war. Some expect an apocalyptic fight between good and evil. (Personally I hope America’s deep partisan divide is fixed not by civil war but by wise leadership. Time will soon tell if Joe Biden can heal the divide.) And the prospect of war is not limited to America; odds seem even higher that WWIII could start soon near Iran, Syria, Israel, China and Taiwan, and a host of other places. If any war must happen and those in charge believe the Ark will guarantee them victory, this is a possible explanation for recent events in Ethiopia.

The ark being stolen recently could also just be a baseless rumor, and if so it would not be the first time. In November 2014, there were rumors that the Ark had been stolen by commandos after the people guarding it have been gassed into unconsciousness. Unfortunately, this time the rumor has a very real body count behind it. Someone definitely felt it was necessary to wipe out every Christian in or near the church in Aksum, and it may have been because they want to take the Ark of the Covenant into battle soon.

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