This shows men carrying the Ark
Of Covenant. Exodus 25:10-16 says at Mount Sinai, Yahweh had Moses to have the Israelites
build the Ark of the Covenant contained the Tablets of Stone on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed as well as Aaron's
rod with buds on it and some manna in a golden pot. God communicated with Moses "from between the two cherubim"
on the Ark's cover (Exodus 25:22, He 9:4). The Ark was called Ārōn Hāb’rīt in Hebrew.
It was always carried wrapped in a veil of the skins of some animal called the tachash in Hebrew and a blue-colored
cloth. It was kept unseen even from those carrying it.  Priests carried it about 2,000 cubits (1,000 meters or 3,400 ft) ahead
of the twelve tribe and their army. (Nu 4:5, 6; 35:5; Jos 4:5; Ps 68:1; 132:8) The Israelites carried
it with them forty years in the wilderness before entering Canaan. Whenever they camped, they put the Ark inside a special
holy tent called The Tabernacle. When they carried it across the bed of the Jordan River, the river separated, letting all the people pass over.
(Josh. 3:15-16; 4:7-18) When they fought the Amalekites, the Ark gave them protection
from God. Its construction may have caused it be charged with static electricity.
Jericho was captured after seven priests carried the Ark of Covenant
around its wall seven days sounding seven trumpets of horns and then shouting. (Josh. 6:4-20)
Artistic drawing of the Ark Of Covenant Roman Catholic Bibles include II Maccabees. There chapter
2 notes that Jeremiah received an oracle from the Lord, and ordered that the tent, ark and incense altar were
to go with him to the mountain of God where he sealed them in a cave, and said "The place shall be unknown
until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy, and then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory
of the Lord and the cloud will appear, as they were shown in the case of Moses, and as Solomon asked that the place should
be specially consecrated."
Moses and Aaron bowing together
before the Ark Of Covenant. After the Philistines captured the Ark they began to suffer various
woes such as piles, that is intensely painful hemmorhoids, (1 Samuel 5, 6) and so after some seven months they gave it back
to the Israelites. King David then joyfully took the Ark to Jerusalem.
When
his son Solomon became King and married Pharaoh's daughter, a non-Jewish woman, Solomon had her to stay
in a house away farther away from the Ark because of its sacred nature. (2 Chron. 8:11) Later King Josiah put
the Ark inside Solomon's Temple (2 Chron. 35:3), but it was apparently removed from there by some succeeding king.
In 586 Babylonians led by Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple. King Nebuchadnezzar may have removed or destroyed
the Ark of Covenant. Revelation 11:19 speaks of it as seen in heaven by a vision. Although 2 Maccabees also refers
to the Ark as no longer on earth, 2 Maccabees 2:4-10 says before the Babylonian invasion, Jeremiah buried it, the
Tabernacle and Altar of Incense in a cave somewhere on Mount Nebo, which is now in Jordan. (Deut. 34:1)
 The Tabernacle
Jeremiah told his followers that it would stay hidden until God gathered
his people and received them unto mercy. However, some believe it is not at Mount Nebo. For example, tradition
says Solomon built a platform from which the Ark could be lowered down into a tunnel system if the Temple were over-run. When
the Babylonians destroyed the Temple and looted its treasures, the Ark is not mentioned as among the items, so the Levite
priests may have take it away through the underground to safety within the tunnel system or elsewhere.
There indeed
are tunnels under the Temple Mount, the area where Solomon's Temple and the later great Temple that Christ was sometimes
at. However, today there are structures holy to Muslims and so any efforts to look there have so far been thwarted.
High Priest Wearing Yellow Ephod
On the other hand, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims it has the Ark
at Aksum (or Axum) in northern Ethiopia. It is claimed that Menelik I with God's
help took it there and only a forgery was left in the Temple in Jerusalem. He was the first Jewish emperor of Ethoipia. Tradition says Solomon was his father and
his mother was Makeda, the Queen of Sheba.
Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_of_Covenant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_of_Covenant
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