commentary: The Truth Matters!

Archeological Suppressions Exposed
Martin G. Collins
Given 14-Mar-15; Sermon #1257c; 11 minutes

Description: (show)

It is in the best interests of secular scientists to remain politically correct, denying anything which would establish the historicity of the Bible, even the location of Joseph's tomb in the settlement of Goshen, containing a statue of Joseph wearing a coat of many colors. Consequently, it is not that the Biblical account which is in error about the events surrounding the Exodus, but historians' pitifully errant chronologies, which are incorrect by some 400 years. Nevertheless, secular scientists and religious leaders, not wanting to be subject to God's laws, boldly proclaim the lie, scoffing at the evidence substantiating the truth. As God's called-out ones, we need to constantly search for the truth, realizing that truth trumps all tradition and scientific manipulation.




In a 2011 interview with Columbia Journalism Review, celebrated filmmaker Errol Morris says that the documentarian’s task is to help audiences “rediscover reality.” He observed,

Someone comes up to you and they say, “Well, I’m a postmodernist. I really don’t care about truth, truth is subjective, or there are all kinds of different versions of truth, your truth, my truth, someone else’s truth.”

And so you say to them, “Well, then it doesn’t matter to you who pulled the trigger? It doesn’t matter to you whether someone committed murder or not; or someone in jail is innocent or not? That’s just a matter of personal opinion?”

Truth matters. People want to know the answers: the who, the what, the when, the how, and the why. And without providing those little truths, they may never learn of the ultimate Truth behind them.

No less than Western law and Christianity itself rest on the historicity of the biblical event of the Israelites’ exodus out of Egypt. Does it matter or not that the Exodus happened? Does it matter when it happened? Of course, we immediately reply to those questions with a resounding, “YES!”

But most of the revered archeological community does not agree. In fact, they have often striven with unrelenting diligence to hide and even destroy the evidence of what they really find beneath the surface. Often their motives are politically driven. In all human societies down through the ages, political correctness has always trumped the truth.

Several weeks ago Sue and I saw a very revealing documentary by filmmaker Tim P. Mahoney, titled, “Patterns of Evidence: Exodus,” a film more than a decade in the making. A lot time was spent producing it. It explores a central issue at the heart of the debate over the Bible’s historical reliability: whether or not Moses led Israel out of bondage in Egypt, through the Red Sea on dry land, and into the wilderness of Shur, as stated in Exodus 15:22.

We were amazed at the amount of factual evidence there is showing that most archaeologists and historians have gotten the timing and chronology of the history of ancient Egypt, and therefore the Exodus, wrong by hundreds of years. For more than 50 years, the vast majority of the world’s most prominent archaeologists and historians have proclaimed that there is no hard evidence to support the Exodus story found in the Bible. That is the official stance among archaeologists, scientists, and historians. In fact, they say that the archaeological record is completely opposed to the Bible’s account. This view of extreme skepticism has spread from academia to the world.

In the documentary, Mr. Mahoney begins with the question, “Is the Bible just a myth, or did the archaeologists get it wrong?” He tackles this issue with a deliberate scientific approach. After examining the details in the biblical text, he journeys across the globe to search for patterns of evidence firsthand. The result is the most in-depth archaeological investigation into the exodus from Egypt ever captured on film.

One of the biggest mysteries of the ancient world is the question of whether the historical events recorded in the Bible actually happened. The stakes of this question are extremely high because today’s world is so connected to the Bible. Even though most of the world denies the Bible and denies God and Jesus Christ, still, the cultures of the world have been influenced tremendously by the Bible's teachings. In fact, the Bible has been the greatest single influence to shape Western civilization. For more than 1500 years, the West accepted the truth of the biblical accounts. Presently, these accounts form the foundations of faith for hundreds of millions of Christians and Jews worldwide. If these events never happened, are those religions based on a gigantic lie? That's basically what the archeologists and historians are telling us.

When issues relating to biblical history come up, they automatically qualify as controversial, and the unveiling of new archaeological finds related to the Bible are met with an atmosphere of explosive apprehension.

The story of the exodus has become particularly controversial. In October, 1999, the prominent Israeli archaeologist Ze’ev Herzog wrote in Ha’aretz Magazine,

This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel.

Many Jews are secular and not religious, and obviously he is one of the secular ones.

The case against the Exodus appears to be so strong that even some religious leaders are labeling it as historical fiction. According to Rabbi David Wolpe, named the most influential rabbi in America by Newsweek Magazine, “The exodus certainly didn’t happen the way the Bible depicted it, assuming that it was a historical event in any description.”

This is a dramatic shift from attitudes of just a century ago. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, European pioneers of archaeology came to the Near East with a shovel in one hand and a Bible in the other. At first, their discoveries seemed to be very supportive of the Bible. However, over the years, new findings and more exacting practices determined that the dates for many of the finds were actually from periods outside the biblical timeframe. (That does not mean the Bible was wrong; it means the dating having to do with the histories of nations was wrong.) In their zeal to prove their faith, it appeared that the previous generation had jumped to their conclusions prematurely, meaning that archaeologists who had a biblical background were stating that the events happened at a certain date in the secular history when in fact they did not, and they found out later they happened at a different time in history than the earlier archaeologists were claiming.

If archaeologists state that after Rameses, a biblical conquest of Canaan (where cities were simultaneously destroyed) never happened, then how do you explain the simultaneous destruction of Canaanite cities much earlier, which seemingly matches the Bible’s record of the Conquest?

The archeological evidence discovered moves the exodus approximately 400 years forward in history from the accepted secular dating of Egyptian history. That means the archaeological evidence shows biblical events happening at certain date, but the secular dates are all shifted by about 400 years. What the world goes by is the secular dates rather than the findings in the ground.

It’s interesting that these 400 years that have been added to Egyptian history have also been added to the history of all the main cultures of the Middle East. These 400 years were added to the length of these nations’ history to line them up with Egypt’s faulty chronology when no archeological evidence exists to account for this gap. Looking at the history of all these nations of the Middle East, all of a sudden there is a quantum leap of 400 years where there is no evidence in any of the histories that they existed, and then they continue on with the histories of the nations.

When these arbitrary 400 years are taken out of Egypt’s and the other Middle Eastern nation’s histories, you find that, indeed, there was a large settlement in Egypt where Goshen is believed to have been. Incredibly, in that settlement, archeologists have found a small-to-medium size pyramid tomb with the statue of a leader wearing a coat of many colors as Joseph wore. Large pyramid tombs were only provided for pharaohs and smaller pyramid tombs only for a top leader of Egypt. If this was Joseph’s tomb—which the evidence certainly is credible that it is—it had been undisturbed, other than that the bones had been removed. Nothing else was disturbed as you would commonly find if grave robbers had pilfered the tomb.

The biblical account states,

Exodus 13:19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had placed the children of Israel under solemn oath, saying, "God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here with you."

Nothing else in the tomb was disturbed, but the bones were gone. And as if that isn’t enough proof, twelve smaller tombs or monuments of lesser leaders were found in the same location in that settlement. These were found located in the time period that is approximately 400 years later than the faulty chronology Egyptian history shows. But archeologists and historians still scoff at the hard evidence because it would mean they had lied and they would have to re-write all the chronology that is linked with Egyptians chronology, which is everything in history since the Egyptians were in existence.

Truth must be thought through. The Bible, by compelling a person to draw his own conclusions and to do his own thinking at one and the same time, makes truth real to him and fixes it in his memory. The other side of that is that the Bible (especially the parables) conceals truth from those who are either too lazy to think or too blinded by prejudice to see. It puts the responsibility fairly and squarely on the individual. It reveals truth to him who desires truth; it conceals truth from him who does not wish to see the truth.

In John 8:32, Jesus Christ tells us, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." The truth matters! Truth always trumps tradition and human reasoning.

What we are seeing is these archaeologists and historians are closing their minds to keep from admitting that their dating is all off and that the Bible is correct.

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