"Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee" - The Lost Ark and The Lost Empire

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The Lost Ark and The Lost Empire 

One of the biggest mysteries in the human history is that concerned with the Lost Ark.

The Ark of the Covenant, also known as the Ark of the Testimony, is a chest described in the Book of Exodus[1] as containing the Tablets of Stone on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. According to the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews,[2] the Ark also contained Aaron's rod, a jar of manna, and the first Torah scroll as written by Moses; however, the first of the Books of Kings says that at the time of King Solomon, the Ark contained only the two Tablets of the Law.

The Babylonian Conquest and aftermath
In 587 BC, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple. There is no record of what became of the Ark in the Books of Kings and Chronicles. But 1 Esdras (the Greek 3rd Book of Ezra} suggests that Babylonians took away the vessels of the ark of God but does not mention taking away the Ark itself:
And they took all the holy vessels of the Lord, both great and small, with the vessels of the ark of God, and the king's treasures, and carried them away into Babylon
—1 Esdras 1:54
In Rabbinic literature, the final disposition of the Ark is disputed.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_of_the_Covenant#The_Babylonian_Conquest_and_aftermath

It is very strange that Israelites or Hebrews didn't make the best effort to secure the Ark by any means from Babylonians.

And it is also very strange that Israelites or Hebrews didn't make the best effort to find and take back the Ark from Babylonians.  And it is mysterious that there are no records about the fate of the Ark or about their efforts to find and take back the Ark when Israelites or Hebrews were allowed to return to Jerusalem.

A reasonable explanation should be that there were some concrete reasons that they couldn't mention the fate of the Ark.  And thus, there are no descriptions about the fate of the Ark in the Old Testament.

Even after they returned to Palestine and Jerusalem, they didn't make any efforts to find or recover the Ark.  It is as if they had completely given up the Ark, the core of their religion.

So, something horrible must have happened to the Ark when it was taken to Babylon.  And, if the fact was recorded in a book of Israelites or Hebrews, it should have damaged their religion and themselves.  Accordingly, everybody responsible kept secret about the fate of the Ark.  Then what happened to the Ark?

Let's check the sequence of the events: In 605 BCE, Babylonia defeated the Kingdom of Judah and besieged Jerusalem.  Since then till 539 BCE when Persia conquered Babylonia, Hebrews were brought to and kept around Babylon.  Persia allowed Hebrews to return to Palestine and build a new temple in Jerusalem.

The most important point is that Hebrews could not liberate themselves by themselves.  They were just a kind of rescued by Persians.  The Ark did not help Hebrews living around Babylon under Babylonian authority.  The Ark was useless for them.  And they were also useless for the Ark, since those Hebrews could not protect the Ark so that the great and holy legacy of Moses and God was not defiled by the hands of the heathen.

It is a great shame for Hebrews.

In fact, it is said that Judaism changed during this Babylon Captivity.  Hebrews wrote some books from a different view than that they had had before the Babylon Captivity.  Now they came to think that their God is not only God for Hebrews but also for all the mankind.  Hebrews' God became not only God of Abraham but also God of Adam and Eve.  Judaism started to be built in this ethnic crisis.

And, one reasonable explanation is that the Ark was secretly carried out of Jerusalem before the defeat of Hebrews.  Except those who took the action, nobody knew it.  Accordingly, the Hebrews in Babylonia didn't know the fate of the Ark.  Their descendants naturally came to lose interest in the Ark.  They had no more strong sense of religious duty to search for it.  The Ark was lost in the turmoil of the war against the Babylonians; that was all for them.  But what became of the Ark after some of Hebrews secretly carried it out of Jerusalem?  Maybe it is now in Ethiopia or in South Africa.

Another explanation is that the Ark fell in the hands of Persians or their king Cyrus the Great.  However, there are no records about how Persians handled the Ark.  But it is a historical fact that Persia became the first world-class empire in the human history after it conquered Babylon and freed Hebrews.

Later conquests under Cyrus and his successors expanded the empire to include Lydia, Babylon, Egypt, and the lands to the west of the Indus andOxus rivers. At its greatest extent, the empire included the modern territories of Iran,Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, all significant population centers of ancient Egypt as far west as Libya, Turkey, Thrace and Macedonia, much of theBlack Sea coastal regions, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, much of Central Asia,Afghanistan, northern Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and parts of Oman and the UAE, making it the first world empire.[66] Conflict on the western borders began with the famousGreco-Persian Wars which continued through the first half of the 5th century BC and ended with the Persian withdrawal from all of their European territories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran#Middle_Ages_.28652.E2.80.931501.29

Indeed, it looks like Persians came to be supported by the power of the Ark.  It is natural if they kept a secret of their possession of the Ark and its power.  But then, why wouldn't the Ark let Hebrews win the war against Babylonians?  Probably, there must have been some sort of blasphemy among Hebrews fighting Babylonians.

Truly God of Moses is God for all the mankind but not only for Hebrews alone.  God must have changed His mind and decided to support Persians.

And then God changed His mind again to support Alexander the Great who defeated Persians.  And then God changed His mind again to support Romans who even occupied and destroyed Jerusalem.  And then God changed His mind again to support Christians and the Vatican.

The power of the Ark might be still on the Vatican.

In my theory, Cyrus the Great occupied Babylon and confiscated the Ark.  He, naturally, opened the holy box to find two stone tables.  He must have been a kind of disappointed, since no jewels were inside it.  So, he put it into the River Euphrates.   When the Ark was submerged, the power of the Ark was freed and rested on the head of King Cyrus who started to build the great empire which might have been built by Hebrews if they had been more faithful to their God before the Babylon Captivity.

With the Ark gone, a chance of Hebrews to establish a global empire had been lost forever.




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Luk 4:13 And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.
Luk 4:14 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about.
Luk 4:15 And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.