Page 67 - Signs of the End

THE SIGNS OF THE END 31

pulpits are so often filled with people who believe so little of the
Word of God.

Into this hostile intellectual environment comes these
irrefutable discoveries of archaeological facts on an almost

monthly basis from Israel. They are routinely confirming all the
historical statements in the Scriptures, Old and New Testaments.
Where the Old Testament states there was a city in a certain
locale at a certain time, lo and behold, there is the city, covered
up by a hill, known as a tel, for so many thousands of years.
Documents and inscriptions are found demonstrating the reality
of various leaders and wars and countless other facts of history

mentioned in the Bible. When the New Testament mentions that
the Gospel of Christ began in certain fishing villages on the
shores of the Sea of Galilee, and spread to become an active
church in Jerusalem, lo and behold, evidence is found of houses
of Christian worship in Capernaum and ossuaries in tombs with
Christian inscriptions in Jerusalem dating back to the first

century of Jewish Christianity.
The scholarly world cringes at every one of these discoveries,

because they all illuminate the fallacy of their long-held assum p­
tions. They try to downplay the significance of the findings,
indicate that they are open to various interpretations and that
they really do not prove the Bible. But these discoveries are
exactly what we would expect to find, if we simply assume that

the Scriptures are factual historical descriptions of events in
history that actually took place.

As one can imagine, the archaeologists who believe the
historicity of the Bible feel a little uncomfortable in this type of
scholarly atmosphere. They secretly rejoice over every piece of
evidence they uncover, and then have to appear sufficiently
detached am ong their colleagues to maintain their intellectual

credentials. It would seem that just such a man is the archaeolo­
gist who discovered, in the summer of 1993, "the stone of the
House of David," Dr. Abraham Biran. One of the crucial
interviews we conducted in Israel w as with Dr. Biran, and it was
an unforgettable experience.

The news about the discovery hit the international news
wires in July, and the Associated Press and The New York Times