Dr Paul Allen

“For nearly 3000 years man has been searching for the lost Ark. It’s not something to be taken lightly. No one knows its secrets. It’s like nothing you’ve ever gone after before.”  So Dr. Marcus Brody warned Dr. Henry Jones, Jr., aka “Indiana.” That was in Raiders of the Lost Ark, probably the single best adventure movie ever made. But its success, and cultural influence, has indeed proved Brody right. Many do now take the most fearsome object in biblical history too lightly. How could they not? The legion of parodies practically assures it. (Although some, like this famous Simpsons one, are priceless.) The Ark in Reel, and Real, Life The Ark is now back in the news. Both cinematically, and in real life. It was 40 years ago this week that Raiders premiered. And now the fifth Indiana Jones movie has commenced filming. But much more importantly, blood has been shed, again, over Ark.  Earlier this year, a story surfaced that over 800 Ethiopian Christians had been killed protecting the art

“And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.” ( Exodus 32:16 ) In this verse is the first occurrence in the Bible of the word “writing” and, appropriately enough, it is speaking of “the writing of God” rather than the writings of men. The reference, of course, is to the two tables of the law, the Ten Commandments, “written with the finger of God” ( Exodus 31:18 ) and rewritten on a second set of stone tables to replace the first, once they were shattered ( Exodus 34:1 ). All Scripture is divinely inspired, but the Ten Commandments were divinely inscribed! This testimony of their unique importance is a sobering condemnation of any who ignore them or distort their meaning (including the one referring to the six-day creation in Exodus 20:11). But there is another writing of God—this one recorded in the New Testament, one of even greater personal significance to the Christian: “Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Chri