A Stone Bible - a Revelation at Coral Reef!

Just a couple of weeks ago hoteliers Mr and Mrs Bull lost their Court case when they refused to offer a room with double bed for two Gay men to spend the night. Such activity flew in the face of the couple's Christian conviction based on their knowledge of the Bible on this matter. The Bulls had to fork out compensation to the offended would-be guests, such a payment could have threatened to put their hotel business into jeopardy. A victory for the two men against discrimination - a defeat for Christian beliefs held by the hosts. After all, although this is supposed to be a "Christian Country" the Christian faith has little or no relevance, unlike in countries such as Saudi Arabia where the two men would have been executed for breaching the Islamic faith.
After all, not that I have anything against Gay men. But rather than bring the hoteliers to court, why didn't they move on to another hotel? I believe that at an area such as Cornwall, a Gay-friendly hotel might not have been too difficult to find.
Then only last night I was browsing Twitter and came across a link to Richard Dawkins giving a lecture to an audience at the Sydney Opera House. He was debunking the Biblical story of Noah's Ark, and accusing more than 40% of all Americans for believing this story as historical. As Sam Harris quoted in his book, Letter To A Christian Nation,
"Indeed, I am painfully aware that (the USA) now appears...like a lumbering, bellicose, dim-witted giant."
These three atheists: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens had all written books ridiculing the Christian faith in the name of Science. To them, Jesus Christ is no longer the Messiah. He had been replaced by a new messiah - Charles Darwin.
So now we live in an age of growing unbelief  against one of the three monotheistic religions - the Christian faith (the other two being Judaism and Islam) and this seem to reflect in the favouritism for the Palestinians in the Middle East crisis against Israel. The BBC's Middle East correspondent, Orla Gearing, certainly left us with no doubt whose side she was on. While Israel was struggling to establish a stable nation since 1948, when it gained its own sovereignty after the withdrawal of the British Mandate, the likes of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) was committed to "push Israel into the Sea" particularly under the radical leadership of the late Yasser Arafat, who held no other concessions, despite his so called "Peace Plans" in order to temporarily disguise his real intention - which was to gain control of Israeli territory until that nation was vulnerable enough for an all-out attack.
Gearing portrayed the Palestinians as the victim of Israeli aggression, attempting us to sympathise for the Palestinians.
And yet while all this was going on, standing quietly just outside the town of Hebron is the massive stone wall of a building sitting over the underground Cave of Machpelah.
I like to call this structure, The Stone Bible because if ever there was tangible proof of the veracity of the Bible, I think I would place this near the top if not at the top.

Courtesy of http://www.holylandphotos.org/

I visited this building in 1976 along with an Arab friend I made while backpacking Israel. I recall several Jews milling about, at the entrance, a couple of them dressed in garb which would strike familiarity with the Pharisees at the time of Christ.
The building was constructed by Herod the Great between the years 31 to 4 BC. It began as a roofless structure, open to the sky before it was roofed over later in its history. It served as a synagogue, a Christian church and a mosque. It sits over an underground tunnel with its main entrance sealed by the foundation brickwork of the outer wall of the structure. Inside the building, a small upper entrance through the tunnel ceiling is also sealed off and covered by a canopy.

Diagram of underground tunnel and the double caves of Machpelah. To study this illustration fully, I recommend turning the zoom level to 150% or higher.

The Jews considered these caves as a holy site as early as 1,000 BC which is about the time of King David. Rumours say that the original caves were sealed long before then. The Cave(s) of Machpelah was purchased with the field they were under by Abraham from the Hittites, to bury his wife Sarah who just recently died. Afterwards, Abraham himself died, and was buried in the cave next to his wife.
Their son, Isaac married Rebekah and had two sons: Jacob and Esau. At their deaths, both Isaac and Rebekah were buried in the same cave as Abraham and Sarah.
Jacob was renamed "Israel" by God himself, and he had two wives: Leah and Rachel, both sisters.  Leah was the mother of six sons, including Judah (from which the term Jew comes from) the ancestor of King David and of Jesus Christ himself. Leah died before Jacob and was buried in the cave. Rachel, who died still young, had her own tomb, away from the cave, close to Bethlehem.
Finally Jacob (that is, Israel) died and was buried by his son Joseph and his eleven brothers at the same cave, making six people in all. It was quite possible that Joseph, along with the other sons of Israel, had the tomb sealed permanently.
The underground corridor leading to the cave entrance was either built or dug sometime later, but it seem to predate the structure above it, hence its construction must have taken place during Old Testament times. Ancient pottery was found as well as human bones by archaeologists in the cave itself, which may have indicated some offering ritual.

 Cenotaph of Abraham, courtesy of http://www.holylandphotos.org/

Cenotaphs of Rebekah and Isaac, courtesy of http://www.holylandphotos.org/

The Arab friend who took me inside in 1976 mistook the cenotaphs for the tombs of the patriarchs themselves and the interior of the building as the actual caves. So I came back out misled, and basically forgotten - until many years later on a normal Saturday morning in 2010 while relaxing at a sauna at Coral Reef Water World, close to where I live.

In here walked in one bather who after a short while singled me out for a chat. He told me that he was Jewish and he had been to his homeland. I responded with my stories of my time in Israel, including a visit to the mosque sitting over the Cave of Machpelah, along with my interest and understanding of the Bible.

He explained to me that the proper name for Israel is Eretz Yisrael, "Eretz" meaning "land of" and as my own experience can testify, this is how it's known over there. He then explained to me that I should work out each letter of the second word which were an initial of the name of each character - six of them were buried in the Cave of Machpelah. Here was the result:

Yacob

Isaac

Sarah

Rebekah

Abraham

Elohim 

Leah

For me this was an astonishing revelation. Elohim, of course, is one of the titles of God, and therefore not buried with the others in the cave! But the other six were, and these are the Patriarchs, or founding fathers (and mothers) of the nation of Israel. Although the building is now used as a mosque, in reality it has no connection with the Arabs at all, even less the Palestinians. This should be a testimony and a warning for every King, President and other national leaders of  the world and their Governments.

What I find amazing about this structure is that not only is the outer wall well preserved, but is full functioning after well over 2,000 years. It was very likely that Jesus was familiar with it. It remained intact when in AD 70 General Titus invaded the land of Judea and razed Jerusalem to the ground, including the Temple which Herod the Great also embellished. The structure was the sole witness and testimony that the land on which it stood belonged to the Jews. And that was especially during the next 1,878 years after AD 70 when nearly all the Jews were dispersed around the globe. It was as if it was built with such foreknowledge in mind.

No other country has such a testimony of such a scale. There are no tombs of the English founding fathers anywhere in England, likewise none in Italy, none anywhere else in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas or Australasia.

Yet the Bible says much about God being in the midst of his people Israel, as seen in the unscrambled code above. Now if the "Stone Bible" makes such tangible evidence to the truthfulness of the Scriptures, then perhaps the record of Divine Creation, the Noachian Deluge, Abraham and his family, King David  - all acknowledged as historical by Jesus Christ and the Apostles, and all held firmly by the early church - then perhaps there is good reason for us to accept the historicity of the Bible as well.

Richard Dawkins is trying to destroy Christianity in this country and the Western world.

Let's see him try to demolish that thick Herodian wall in Hebron!