The Real Mount Sinai in Arabia with Joel Richardson

howdy and welcome to the 10-week Bible study this is a special edition of the study today I'm your host Aaron Hibbs and I've got with me special guest Joel Richardson it's good to be here Darren thanks so much for having me on yeah thanks for coming we're gonna be talking about Mount Sinai in Arabia [Music] thanks for joining me on the 10-week Bible study I am your host Darren Hibbs and again I am joined by my special guest Joel Richardson how are you doing today I'm doing fantastic I appreciate you coming on tell us just a little bit about yourself Joel so if anyone does know me that would probably know me through some of my books I've written a handful of books on eschatology the return of Jesus and my most recent book which we're going to talk about a bit Mount Sinai in Arabia so I guess I've sort of crossed into slightly different territory but I also travel all over the country and teach I would say more than anything I'm a I'm an author teacher and do a few other things so we've got Joel is a family man author speaker you've got a great show in the underground and all of these things we're gonna have linked in the description so I encourage you to check all of the things that Joel has done out great catalog of books and we're here specifically talk about Mount Sinai in Arabia now when I invited you I was happily surprised we're going through Exodus right now in the 10-week Bible study and I was happily surprised when I emailed you because you you've tweeted a bunch and you put out some videos on this you know Mount Sinai in Arabia I didn't actually know at the time that you were going to release a book so I was very pleasantly surprised and and now we've got it so I want to encourage everybody do this several times during this to to get this book and and Kindle or paperback or it's in hardcover as well isn't it no it's actually it's actually a paperback is the first book that I've released as a paper if I am you know so I would encourage you to get this book because it is a fascinating fascinating read before we jump into the meat why don't we go ahead and pray before we start today all right Lord would you just speak to us today open our eyes and our ears to your word help us to understand and and be fascinated with you through through looking at something with a fresh pair of eyes of fresh lens today in Jesus name we pray all right well to jump right in I'm curious what led you to start writing in the first place you've got quite a catalogue of books and you've been writing for quite a while you've you've had lots of media appearances you've done really well with your books what got you into it so just to jump back shortly after I came to faith in 91 1991 I had committed myself to the Islamic world I wanted to be a missionary specifically in the Middle East and you know we make our plans but the Lord sort of organizes or arranges our life and so a few years later I had I was sort of a couple years into my education pursuing this and I actually decided it would be better for me to get a you know tent making degree so I was going to pursue a degree in engineering here in Kansas City at UMKC and then I would use that again to move to the Middle East so then in the process of that again so I guess this would be let's say 95 met my wife all right so this is life happens I met my wife and you know just not long thereafter you know we're married we've got a baby on the way she has she's always had a lot of different medical issues but it was really during the first pregnancy that a lot of them sort of blossomed and I was I'll just you know say it this way it was combination of a lot of her physical difficulties with I think I just a realization of my own and maturity that I just said you know realistically I'm not prepared to raise my family in the Middle East and so then I had started a business to get myself through school which was doing fantastic I mean it just took off right away and this is the funny part I wasn't doing very good with advanced math and if you're an engineer that's probably not a good idea so I actually dropped out of school and it was during this period of the 90s that but I still had this passion for reaching out to Muslims I've been doing a lot of that at UMKC a lot of the international student actually I had started a UMKC Christian Fellowship of ministry but when I dropped out of school I started volunteering for various ministries so essentially I was doing email correspondence so you know real simple Muslim sends in a question or you know they have something that went argue about and you would we would engage via email again during the the Wild West you know the old days of the internet back before 9/11 and what I found it was that I was quite good at giving answers and you know articulating the reasons for the faith etc and really enjoyed that so I would say those years more than anything I mean just sort of being in in the trenches arguing working through you know not just simple arguments but real heavy theological arguments dealing with some incredibly brilliant people actually I was tell the story there was one guy that really impacted me he spoke several languages and he had gotten his master's degree in the subject of the history of the development of the Canon of the Bible just so that he could argue with Christians Wow and so we went back and forth for years and you know so I was reading you know really getting into stuff that I had never gotten into back when I was in school so if the 9/11 happened and everything changed and so here I was sort of having already been for some years in the theological trenches of Islam and out of that period I started seeing a lot of things about Islam that I had never really recognized there was a an onslaught a tidal wave of Westerners that were actually converting to Islam and during those years I'll just say there was always the stack of books that I'm working through right because you know there's a new argument every day but just out of my own personal interest I had started studying Islamic eschatology so and when I researched something I really just sort of you know dig in as and I think I read probably every book that is available on the subject in English and I just said I need to put this into writing and so I just said I'm gonna write a book but I didn't have any aspirations to be a published author I just thought I had to get this information out I actually put it online for free to this day it's still on on the website answering Islam org and it turns out that I'm nonfat he would see a link I think that here and it sits under the title of will his Salaam be our future that wasn't the initial sort of first title but it turns out that I'm not a terrible writer despite the fact that I dropped out of college and so then from there it just you know it sort of snowballed and I guess I got the bug and so now I've got you know several books sort of behind me I still don't enjoy the process by the way it's a very painful tedious process of writing but when you have something in you that you have to get out I still believe in the format of books I still believe in books we're going through Exodus on this study right now and I mean this is a story that everyone is familiar with I mean just if you don't know anything else about the Bible you probably know that Jesus was in a manger or something like that and there was a star and you probably know about a big giant that a kid killed with a stone and then you probably know that there was a group of people that passed through the Red Sea with a wall of water on either side and all the Egyptians were killed if you if you're in America you don't know anything else about the Bible you probably know that and this is one of the few stories in there and what I find fascinating about it is how most people you know we just kind of take the traditions that have been given to us and and run with them and there's not much investigation into that and for 1,500 years there's been almost no investigation into something that is very plain if you just look into it carefully and that's the issue of where is Mount Sinai and when you ask that question you find out maybe a more compelling answer to it it starts to have you backtrack through the book of Exodus and ask a lot more questions so with that jewels are in the book Mount Sinai in Arabia the traditional location for Mount Sinai is in a place called the Sinai Peninsula talk to us about how how did it get that name and and why do you think that it's in Arabia and not in the Sinai Peninsula yeah yeah so first of all let's just begin actually let me just say this this is important this is not just sort of a peripheral archaeological trivia question yeah and the reason is because of the centrality the foundational importance of the story of the Exodus nearly everything in the Old Testament is arranged and structured toward remember remember remember remember remember what I did when I led you out of Egypt by a strong and out worry you know remember when I did all these mighty miracles remember when I came down the mountain remember and the reason is and I'll just say this when you look at the book of Acts you look at the Apostolic model of preaching the gospel there's this pattern of continually pointing back remember what God did back here at exodus so that you will have confidence of what he's going to do in the future yeah it's really rooted in two things remember what he did at the Exodus and also and he came back from the dead therefore we have confidence that he's coming back so the same God that came down in fire in clouds with an earthquake with trumpets and thunder is coming back on the clouds in fire with the trumpets Agra mighty earthquake he's coming back right so the entire gospel reality the the biblical hope the hope of the gospel is rooted in the historical reality of the Exodus okay so therefore where it is is important and the reason I say this is because if you assess the majority of the opinion the widespread opinion throughout the Exodus community I need in terms of exodus scholars Exodus scholarship there's a high percentage of Exodus scholars that don't believe it ever happened yeah and that's true like most things in the Bible is it seems like most biblical scholars now don't believe the Bible in general true but now if you were just say like you know did king David exists you know we've got a lot of evidence we've got a lot of evidence within the Land of Israel for a lot of events you know did Jesus exist was the historical yeah but the exodus which you know again the the Exodus story you know there were people who follow Jesus around they saw him do miracles live in person and they walked away and didn't believe it you think about that and this is the nature most often I have ma in my opinion of the way God works is that when he does miracles even Jesus himself there's still he allows a room for doubt yeah because he wants us to exercise trust because relationship is built on trust and most of the miraculous stories throughout the Bible are this way in my own life I've seen some crazy things but there was still room there for doubt but this is not the case with the Exodus you know he came down in fire and you know and there at the base of the mountain begging Moses please ask him to stop talking you know they didn't walk away and go oh you know did I just have a little hypoglycemic fit and hallucinate a little bit you know they they know that God and he ripped the ocean in half in front of the MEXT cetera so the point is this is a unique event in biblical history it's important that we recognize that it's real that it happened okay so we've been looking in all the wrong places how did we end up with the traditional site that's down there in the southern Sinai Peninsula now if you go online and you read you know some different articles about this a lot of people say well you had Queen Elena who was Constantine's mother and they'll say well she had this vision and she claimed easily in Constantine was the Emperor the Roman Emperor so we're talking fourth century so in the 300s time ago a long time ago and the claim is that after he converted his mother Hellena converted and she went on this pilgrimage this trip to identify various relics and historical biblical sites and to identify them and so on and so forth and she did there was a few basilica's that were established because of her visit but there's actually no records that she ever traveled to the Sinai Peninsula so we don't know if that story is true or not I can find it in any historical source material I think that it's just a popular idea that has circulated on the internet I couldn't find any historical biblical evidence that there was a claim that Hellena had a vision so there's not even like 600 ad no one says that she went visited this is a modern I think so I I couldn't you know and again I really scoured the the historical documents and all of the scholarly literature I couldn't find any of it what we do have is we have a few of these Egyptian monks you know so this is the period Anthony you know these guys are leaving the corruption of modern 4th century Egyptian society and they're fleeing into the desert to give themselves to a monastic ascetic lifestyle and so there you know these Hermits out there praying and fasting and and you know depriving themselves and so forth so they developed this tradition sort of just this tradition that pops up almost really out of nowhere that this particular mountain there in the southern Sinai Peninsula was the real Mount Sinai now again there's no historical no traditional no archaeological no biblical evidence for this this is already several thousands of years after the exodus itself pushing 4000 years yeah let's say the Exodus is roughly 3,500 years BC so now we're talking you know again let's just say in the early 300 so the early 4th century we're pushing 4000 years after the after the exodus so with with no historical data or anything they just establish almost 4,000 years later this is Mount Sinai this tradition developed and then you had so you had you had a few visitors that went there this one woman wrote a book called the Peregrine OTO which I think means like the pilgrimage or I may be pronouncing that wrong and there was a couple different visitors and again they were going on the traditions of these monks and so it started becoming a popular view you know there was some European visitors pilgrims that were listening to these monks etc well then so what happened inevitably as you had these monks out in the the desert they kept getting killed in various attacks from the they were called the Saracens or sometimes the Ishmaelites right so these are the desert you know Road Marauders and so forth are killing some of these monks so then what happened is in the fifth century I'm sorry the sixth century so in the five hundreds you had Emperor Justinian built a fortress and this is what has come to be called st. Catherine's Monastery the full name of which is st. Catherine's Monastery of the god trodden Mountain okay so now here you are in the 500s okay so we're talking over five hundred years after Jesus ascends to heaven and you now have the full if you will wait in authority of the Roman Empire having built this this monastery this fortress that this is the real location okay now what's interesting and what most people don't know is that throughout this time period there was an alternative tradition in fact it's very ancient tradition that goes all the way back to the 3rd century BC it was a Jewish tradition and there's a professor named Allan Kirkus lagger who had written an excellent book on this I'm gonna say I don't remember the exact name you say it's about 15 years ago called pilgrimage in sacred space and and he has essentially traces through this tradition he does the best job and I sort of just highlight some of these primary ancient traditions so it begins with a sub to Aegean the Septuagint having been a Greek translation of the Old Testament that was begun in about the 3rd century BC so we're talking about 250 years before Jesus and we have some hints within the Septuagint concerning where the Jews of this period the Second Temple period believed Mount Sinai was and also where they believed Midian was ok so in Midian is important because it's where Moses was at befooling and in between he's in Egypt he's 40 years old he goes to Midian yeah and then when he's 80 he goes back to Egypt yeah so he initially he flees he kills this Egyptian he flees and ends up in Midian he meets Jethro he meets Jethro's daughter Zipporah and marries her and he's over there in the land of Midian shepherding Jethro's flocks and you have the statement where it says that Moses was shepherding Jethro's flocks and he came to the far side of the desert and he came to the mountain of God and he feeds the sheep there ok so the surface reading of the text would seem to indicate that Mount Sinai is someplace close within proximity to the ancient land of Midian now Midian a scholarly consensus and overwhelming evidence points to the fact that it was over there in what is today northwest Saudi Arabia okay so you're talking east of the Gulf of Aqaba east of the Red Sea so not the Sinai Peninsula for those who don't have a map right in front of you for those of you that are listening to this on the podcast only if you check out the link to the YouTube video you'll be able to see all of the maps for this will have them oh fantastic here so the Sinai Peninsula being this Pizza shaped peninsula in between the large Arabian Peninsula and Africa of course which is where Egypt was located so and just to answer one of your previous questions why is the Sinai Peninsula called the Sinai Peninsula well it's because this traditional site of Mount Sinai was was pointed to there and then since then the peninsula has been named after it yeah so it's not that didn't come before that's important to point out so in any case answers the chicken or the egg question exactly came first the which came first the mountain or the peninsula so so the reason that Midian is important is because within the Septuagint well first of all it you know in all likelihood again the text seems to indicate that Mount Sinai was in proximity to Midian and there are many many other reasons to point to that other than this one passage but in the Septuagint it treats Midian like a city and so there's a few hints of that when it talks about Jethro going to visit Moses when he was at the mountain it says that Jethro went out with the inference that when he left Midian he went out of a city and then he went out to the desert this is the type of language that's used when it refers to the the the elders of Midian it uses the term in the Greek which exclusively means the city councilors it also uses an interest in variation rather than using Midian it always uses either ma diem or madyun yo that's a similar variation on Midian ma diem or ma Tian but what's interesting is that when we look at this first century work of this Roman geographer named Claudius Ptolemy he actually places two distinct cities over there on the east eastern coast of the Gulf of Aqaba one is called mo dianna the other is called Maddy Yama okay so we know that there was a well-known city possibly one or two over there in the area of Midian in all likelihood this was the ancient heartland or the principle homeland of the ancient Midianites now for clarity yes biblically the Midianites did migrate around hundreds of years after this time but during the time of Moses they seemed to have been settled relatively in a in a localized homeland an ancient homeland now geographically or geologically when you go there there is a city today there in Saudi Arabia called Al Bhed and it's an oasis and it's a very you know once you go what you can read about it this is all interesting once you go there and you go oh okay this makes sense you're out in the middle of a massive desert yeah and here's this oasis with all kinds of palm trees and springs and it was right on the ancient arabian caravan route okay so they came up out of Arabia with all their spices and in senses and resins and they would be make their way up toward Egypt or towards Syria and it was right along that this so this was by far the most natural place that anyone in ancient times would have settled so it really makes sense that this was Midian that al bad today is the ancient homeland of Midian well interestingly when you go there you have it's like all over the place there are these various archaeological sites that the Saudis have fenced off they've created these little archaeological parks and all of the locals you know refer to these places they say this is the well of Moses this is the caves of Jethro you know this is the springs of Moses this is Moses mountain yeah and all of these things so the locals you know this is well ingrained in local Arab tradition okay so you know there's several different things here so you start out with the Septuagint then you get to the first century and you have in the writings of both Philo and Josephus you have these statements that Mount Sinai was that tallest mountain in the area just outside of Midian okay and so when you go to out bad today the tallest mountain just outside of of that is this mountain range called jebel all laws or Gible a loose and and it's one of these two really massive beasts of a mountain that we believe is the real Mount Sinai and it just so happens that this is the mountain that all of the locals also believe is the real ancient mountain and these locals just to point out they're not people with an axe to grind or they're not people schooled in Christian history these are Muslim Arabians who have been you know native to that area for thousands of years yeah and you can go back hundreds of years and even thousands of years to some of these ancient Arab geographers and they make similar references so this is not some new idea these guys didn't just get on YouTube in the past ten years and watch some Christian videos and go oh wow this is Mount Sinai this has been a this is an unbroken tradition because what's interesting is you know I just highlighted some of the primary sources for this ancient Jewish tradition and and I should point out that you have Philo who was over in Alexandria he also had Josephus who was in Jerusalem so you have a Jerusalem you the Jerusalemites the Jews in Jerusalem you have kind of a different tradition and they both have the same tradition that Mount Sinai was the tallest mountain just outside of the city of Midian in that district in that region well then you have the early Christians you have Bishop Demetrius you have Eusebius you have Jerome and there's one other primary so some of these early church writers they continued and carried on the same the same Jewish tradition even during the same time when Justinian had sort of as five 600 AD yeah so yeah so yeah so I'm Jerome he's up there in the I believe 5th century and so during the same time period as this other alternative tradition was being established they bucked the trend and they go no that's not that's not the real Mount Sinai they continued to teach the same tradition that the Jewish that the Jews had believed and so interestingly enough then in the 7th century when Muhammad comes along he just really continued that same tradition in fact some of the ancient Muslim historians say that when they went up to those mountains there were all these Christian monks or anchorites Hermits basically that we're living in the mountain and so you have this unbroken tradition again Jewish Christian and Muslim tradition right up to this day that that you know this is 600 years older than the other you know traditional site that says that real Mount Sinai a is over there in northwest Saudi Arabia and it's and one of the things making the problem worse is when we look back at the ancient historians and geographers you know they had the Mediterranean pretty pretty nailed down they were pretty good at that they had the Fertile Crescent and pretty well nailed down but other than the spice traders and these people coming from Arabia it's not a tourist destination right and so the geographers were relatively unfamiliar with the Arabian Peninsula the Sinai Peninsula I mean these are horrible deserts yeah you know really rugged awful places to have to travel in ancient times and so when you look at the ancient maps they're they're pretty bad yeah yeah they're really bad in fact it's fascinating there's another book called The Lost sea of the Exodus by dr. Glen fritz and it's a tedious thorough volume but if you really want to get into it this is this guy is know I've never seen anybody more thorough than this guy I mean this is like five PhDs combined into this fun book and what he does is he analyzes dozens upon dozens of maps and so he's he's looking at the writings of Herodotus stray bow again Claudius Ptolemy Pliny the Elder all of these different works these these greco-roman geographers and historians and it analyzes their writings and he concludes he goes they had no clarity on the Sinai Peninsula so yes they understood that the Arabian Peninsula was there they had a loose some of them had a loose framework for it but really when it comes to again if you're to look at the Sinai Peninsula you have the Gulf of Suez that goes up on the western side the Gulf of Aqaba almost often called the Red Sea on the eastern side they didn't seem to understand that there were clearly two distinct inlets now when you get to Pliny actually Strabo is the first one that seems to indicate that there were two inlets but he still was very vague on it in his mind what you had was essentially one inlet that he called the Arabian canal or the the Arabian channel that would let's say go from south to north and then sort of just one little branch that breaks off a little bit to the right that would be the the the Red Sea or the the Gulf of Aqaba and so and let me point out if you are listening to this on the podcast then if you're not driving click over right now to the YouTube video and you'll see some of the maps that we're talking about here yeah so this is you know again it's hard to describe but here's the thing is that if you try to find a single map that was created based on the writings of any of these ancient greco-roman geographers anything before the 1800s they're all a nightmare they bear very little resemblance to the world that we know and the reason is because they didn't have clarity now there have been some traditionalists that have argued oh no look at what strable said here look at the heap they clearly understood the Sinai Peninsula and it's easy to impose their words on to our modern understanding and I say if they had such clarity then here's the challenge show me a single map show me any map made anywhere in the world anytime throughout history based on their writings before 1800 where they had the Sinai Peninsula drawn out and you can't find it it doesn't exist in fact it wasn't even until the 1800s that modern map makers began to have clarity on the Sinai Peninsula so what's fascinating about all of this is that it's a bit of just as sort of an interesting bit of trivia but when understand the lack of clarity that they had again back in you know beginning with about 500 BC Herodotus is 450 BC up until the first century Claudius Ptolemy is writing a little bit after Paul late first century it helps us to understand some of the fog that crept in and why there's been so much confusion over this location because there was some geographic nebula sness is that a word nebulosity nebula sheis ness there was some confusion over the geography and so it wasn't just a whole lot of point of spending a lot of time figuring out the geography because there's there's like ten people a year going to these places you know that aren't in the spice trade it's yeah yeah yeah and so yeah it's it's fascinating it's been it's a fascinating study to get into but but you know we understand it now and and and I'll be honest with you Darrin I I really believe that within the sovereignty of God this is this is all ordained I believe that it's not just simple coincidence that the greatest event the foundational event has been preserved that it's been protected I really believe that God has preserved and hidden this mountain for these last days and I think that's an important point because we look at ancient you know ancient artifacts and ruins and things like that I mean you look at the great pyramids they're still standing but they they do not contain the glory with which they were built I mean Raiders because of the materials and because of how what they meant you know Raiders have have through the centuries come and stripped off anything of value off of the great pyramids and all that's left now are basically the structural stones underneath but they would have been very smooth faced marble beautiful structures and the fact that really for the most part very few people have known or cared that Mount Sinai the melting of God would have been in Saudi Arabia meant that it no one's messed with it not too many people have messed with it yeah you know there's been the Saudis did a bit of an archeological survey there about a dozen years ago but just as an example to highlight how pristine this place is is you know I went there back in April 2000 18 the and of April beginning of May and as soon as we approach the mountain we cross this eastern Valley and I walked up and I found this sort of stack of rocks it was it was it was not a stack of rocks I'll just say it was a little jettison a little natural outcropping and it sort of had sort of a cave like part to it I mean it was like a cave where you could one person could sleep and get some cover from the rain and as I looked in there was this mural this sort of ancient painting of let's say a dozen or so archers and you know they're they've got bows and arrows and I thought hey wow look at this an old cave painting you know and it had been preserved because it was sort of on the underside of the rocks I'm sure that there probably were a lot more at one time that have worn off but so we took pictures of it and I sent it to Jim and Penny Caldwell there another couple that had gone there many times back in the 90s and you know again I've worked through all of the material that has been published on this location no one to date has ever taken pictures of this particular mural I just stumbled upon it I'm not an archaeologist I'm just do-do-do-do-do you know just stumbling along first time there and I found what's something that could be a genuine historical location of value and then it was interesting again it's all these people with arrows and I texted pictures to my wife actually had cell service out there I mean it's out in the middle of nowhere and my wife said well this is and for many of your listeners that are going through Exodus she does it just like in Exodus Exodus 19 and I said wait a minute well you know refresh my memory and she said yeah the Lord said Moses consecrate the people because on the third day I'm gonna come down on the mountain but you shall warn them that neither man nor animal shall step foot on the mountain and if they do they are to be stoned to death or shot through with arrows and then he goes on he says and put markers around the base of the mountain so that they'll know and Here I am looking I'm going okay the Bible says that the LORD commanded Moses to put warnings around the base of the mountain and here's this this keep out sign if you will of all these people shooting arrows there's no animals they're not hunting and I'm thinking you know and then in order by the way practically for that had to have and carried out there probably were archers actually stationed there yeah well I think this is amazing too because a lot of times there's a disconnect right between reading the Bible and actually thinking of these ancient things in real world terms you know how did they keep the people off the mountain and you know we're talking about a signage yeah you know for uh probably illiterate people yeah and and and so this is I love this yeah it's the equivalent of this property protected by Smith & Wesson yeah and I don't know did they put the levites up there you know the Levites were the ones that were responsible for slaying the idolaters you know were they Lee who knows the in all likelihood there were some archers that were stationed interestingly on these high this sort of high jettison this rock and maybe there were several other locations all around this eastern side which by the way is where they would have been camped and so if dumb old Joel just stumbling along the first time that he's there within a couple hours after arriving finds something of this of historical significance I'm convinced that over the next several years there's going to be all kinds of things discovered and analyse say this is well the Saudis that I've been in dialogue wid they say look there are all kinds of things that they are about to bring out to the public so they have found many things over the years and they've been kept in their museums and so forth but they have not been open to the public and so I'm convinced they're gonna bring out all kinds of artifacts establishing the fact specifically that the ancient Hebrews were there that there's actual symbols like menorahs and different things which are pretty undeniable and they have them in their possession and they and they have every intention on showing them to the world and there's a change in Saudi Arabia right now that they seem to be going the way of Qatar and Dubai that they're realizing they need to diversify themselves away from oil if they're going to survive on the world stage yeah Saudi Arabia is an interesting place but yeah they need to diversify their economy and they recognize look you know the the the Saudi royal family has a lot of different tribes within it if you will or maybe that's not the best term but a lot of different you know different groups different opinions and and for those that don't understand the Saudi royal family is not ten people yeah yeah it's thirty thousand people it's rabbits so when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman it just took over you know stepped in I guess now about two years ago he cut off a large section of the royal family in terms of the stipend that they would get actually imprisoned a lot of them you know while lead men to law was actually in prison someone's over and he's considered to be one of the wealthiest princes so a lot of shocking things but yeah they want to modernize and they recognized I think folks like Mohammed bin Salman recognized that they have a problem with radicals themselves the radicals would like to kick the royal family out of power they want you know a theocracy they want a caliphate and so they recognize that if they want to stay in power these radicals are not just a danger to the West it's a danger to their own existence and so again within a sovereignty of God I believe that this is his plan that he has brought forth this sort of changed this transition in what was formerly such a closed Kingdom and I believe that in all of this the Lord has a testimony that he's going to bring forth and so you believe that in in the next years decades saudi arabia is going to begin to fund you know or at least allow archaeological exploration of the mountain and and possibly even open it up for for for travelers to freely go there I mean for a long time you know it's been difficult or illegal or borderline illegal to even travel to this mountain yeah yeah absolutely so the Saudis not only do they recognize that it is the mountain they have put up fences to protect it over the years you know you'll see all these sort of claims on the internet well those Muslims they don't want anyone know when the truth about the Bible they're trying to hide it no they've been protecting because they don't want a bunch of crazy Americans going over there and tearing it up you know and if you don't they've done a very good job they've done what should have been done but the time is that time is over and so they're going to preserve and protect the areas I believe there's gonna they're going to allow in the archaeologists and again I've got you know information that I'm aware of but I would say that it'll be before the end of this year well 2019 that tourists will begin going to the mountain and and in all likelihood we'll see some some big public events with some delegations going over and with announcements being made now and I don't mean to be cynical because this is more than just a financial opportunity for the Saudis they really do believe that it's the real Mount Sinai but it will be a great moneymaker they're looking at Israel they recognized last year you had over two million tourists go to Israel sixty-eight percent were Christians and so what they have here look again we have to understand the the thing that this is in biblical history this is gonna this is gonna change everything you know when people look at this and go wow this actually really happened this really is here it changes so much I mean all of the Bible atlases are gonna need to be rewritten yeah yeah you know I mean there's just there's no there's a lot there and so it's it's exciting a minute but it's it's a historical moment well so speaking of which let's let's talk about the the Bible atlases and walk people through the difference between what's probably in their Bible Atlas as far as the route of the Exodus versus what you see and and and what I believe is is is much more realistic as far as the descriptions in the Bible what is the actual route of the Exodus okay so traditionalists will say most often there's there's probably six or seven different options that they will offer but most often it's through any number of various lakes or marshes north of the head of the Gulf of Suez some say they actually cross through the Gulf of Suez itself but that's kind of where the the Suez Canal is right now yeah exactly you know Lake Tim saw or I think I'm pronouncing that wrong but there's a handful some of the marshes and so forth and so if that's the case then again that's on the western side of the Sinai Peninsula then it stands to reason that Mount Sinai of course would be there and and really this is sort of what this is is a reverse engineering once Emperor Justinian again established st. katherine's monastery then by logical extension the Exodus crossing must have happened over there on the western side so this is sort of the compounding error of traditionalism well because so now what you have with regard to the Exodus is you have in both Exodus and numbers you have these various cities locations where they stopped or where they camped along the way both before the sea crossing and after so this is called the itinerary and so scholars spend a lot of time trying to establish the itinerary it's very important with an exodus scholarship they say if you want to prove where Mount Sinai is you have to sort of establish where all of these other you know 910 locations are well that becomes very complicated quick because not only are you working through all kinds of historical data to establish one location now you've just multiplied the controversy again but times 10 but because they believe the sea crossing is over there by Egypt so many places such as Sukkot or the desert of sure the wilderness of Shur this comes up in the Bible several times that's all going to be over there toward Egypt okay whereas in reality I think a much more solid biblical case can be made for instance with regard to the desert of shore to be over there by Edom to be over there by southern Jordan of course this was the place where Hagar and Ishmael went after they left the camp of Abraham where did all of the issue Ishmael sons come to settle again it was over there in southern Jordan northwest Saudi Arabia David attacked the Amalekites and he destroyed them all the way from sure to havilah ha Vila is associated with a Garden of Eden most often it's placed over there in a rack okay so you know based on other biblical geographical criteria you really it points to it being over there again southern southern Jordan Northwest Saudi Arabia but most Bible atlases because of the assumptions as to where the the mountain is they're going to move that over to Egypt so there's no it's not just Mount Sinai that needs to change it's about eight or nine other locations and I don't know that we're ever gonna figure it out where exactly is Kardash banya and some of these locations I don't know that we'll ever establish it but it's going to completely change scholarship in this arena completely because these places are so ancient and they haven't been permanently inhabited all this time you know some of them are lost or you know it's like finding a needle in a stack of needles you know where which piece of sand you turn over to to say that this is that place it's it's a very difficult game to try and find those places to begin with yeah and then you're gonna have the resistance of traditional scholarship yeah and and that traditional scholarship tells you that the Red Sea crossing where the water swept away all of the Egyptians and and drowned them was six inches of water in a marsh or two feet of water in a marsh yeah where they'll they'll try to sort of mitigate the fact that they've minimized it and say well this thing certain times of the year could be as much as nine feet deep and you go well that's mildly more impressive than a few inches here this or thing or foot deep but the language that the Weibull use is so clearly again you know the song of Moses after you know either one it was just some of the most gross hyperbole you know or it was a it was through the sea and I think all of the biblical evidence if we're honest with the biblical language we have to acknowledge that it was through the sea not just some lake some small lake or Marsh or this sort of thing and and in your book you go into detail into the meaning of those words and a lot of people because they said here's Mount Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula they've kind of reverse-engineer like you said what's your means which is the what's commonly interpreted in Bibles as the Red Sea or the read see yep and and and there's really no evidence and this is one of those things where we don't get into the podcast we don't get into the Bible study very often in the weeds of ancient languages because our translators have done a good job for the most part but because of the the tradition yeah Yosef is one of those words where the ancient Hebrew it's not actually clear what it means and so they've kind of interpreted the way they wanted to to back into this traditional understanding yeah yeah and it gets real tricky fast it gets you know so the the ancient Greeks viewed this ancient body of water this ocean down south of the Arabian Peninsula as the Red Sea the erythro Thalassa and then Maurya rubra which was not to be confused with Marco Rubio you know in Latin but but so then again because of their lack of clarity regarding the Sinai Peninsula regarding the Gulf of Suez regarding the Gulf of Aqaba by extension the translators of the Septuagint just called this jung-soo again the the sea of tzuf they called it the erythro Thalassa and every Bible translator and scholar will acknowledge that that's wrong but here's what's interesting the New Testament both in the book of Acts in Hebrews calls it the erythro Thalassa so the New Testament writers use this term which was technically inaccurate but which had come to be wildly widely accepted during the first century so that sort of compounds the complexity of all this but so then what most scholars do is they go well we know that read C is not accurate that tzuf doesn't mean read I'm sorry that read C is not accurate that tzuf does not mean read and so then they go actually tzuf is an Egyptian loan word that the Hebrews borrowed it from the Egyptians and it actually means reads and so thus you end up with read see what helps if they're crossing a a refilled swamp yeah but here's the problem what's interesting is there's only one verse in the whole Bible that could possibly be used to say that Sufi means reads it's it's actually not a foregone conclusion and that's where Moses is placed in a basket among the Sioux and there's really only one other verse where the word tzuf even has we'll call it a you know a reference to something that has plant-like which is when Jonah says you know I was under the water and the soup wrapped around me and of course that would be seaweed that wouldn't be that wouldn't be you know papyrus reeds deep in the ocean but so what I offer in the book and what many scholars also agree with is a much better translation is that sooth means the end or the boundary and so this was the sea at the boundary to sea at the end of the land because the Gulf of Aqaba as the tzuf was the sea that is at the end of the promised land it was way down there in the south it was sort of the southernmost part of the known world if you will and and so that in my opinion is a much it's a much better fit it fits with all of the biblical data and it fits with the the more common usage throughout the Bible you know again we're trying to build an entire doctrine based on one verse verses several other verses that lean in the other direction but again that's what traditional scholarship has forced us to to agree with and so so what that leads us to is if we're if we take the Bible at its word and we we kind of follow along with with where they're going and and and how this works out it leads us to see that they actually instead of crossing a body of water that's not really there into the Sinai Peninsula it gives us the understanding that they actually crossed over the Sinai Peninsula came to the western edge of the Gulf of Aqaba right to this ridiculously large beach that's just jutting out surrounded by mountains yeah and then crossed over what is what we call and and that's an important thing here is our names for things are not necessarily their names for things and there might have been 10 in between then and now for these different things so sure they crossed the Gulf of Aqaba over into northwestern Saudi Arabia yep yes so the location is through this narrow Wadi this Gorge through the mountains called Wadi would tear which leads out to nueva today it's called nueva why he's just a you know Val Canyon yeah Ali yeah real tight through the through the mountains and that's exactly by the way what Josephus describes he says you know the Hebrews were trapped between the water and this very narrow pathway through the mountains the the Egyptians are up on the mountains they've got them trapped and there's no mountains over on the suicide yeah I mean it's like a mile or so away from the shore so you go either Josephus had no clue what he was talking about or he had some insight now Josephus was a bit confused by the way cuz Josephus did actually think the crossing took place over by the suez so that's what's interesting because but then what he describes is something that can only be ascribed to the Gulf of Aqaba so it's like you kind of go which did he believe he obviously had some conflicting information but what's interesting about all this is you go okay so there's a few other candidates beside the traditional site you also have Jeb Olsen Bashar this guy named Menasha har el he's a Israeli archaeologist he says it's over there this is a mountain that's close to the Gulf of Suez you've got another mountain called on the Sinai Peninsula yeah in the Sinai Peninsula you got another one up in the Nick keV which a good friend of mine in Israel southern Israel yeah this is called har kharkom actually in Israel and the problem with all of these sites is again once you establish where Midian is then you have to say that Moses in order to feed the Sheep led the Sheep on a if we're dealing with the traditional site for instance a 500 mile round trip because Moses went when he's with Jethro he's he's tending the flocks there he goes up on this mountain and the Lord says I'm going to bring you you'll know that I'm behind all this when I bring you back to this mountain yeah smells it the mountain of God and if Midian is in Northwest Saudi Arabia to get to to get to the Sinai Peninsula it really is kind of a ridiculous stretch for him to take the flocks yeah that far doesn't make any sense if it was Jeb Olsen Bashar then you're dealing with several hundred mile round-trip so you know you end up with huge problems but if it's over there in Northwest Saudi Arabia then it makes sense and and many of these tensions are dissolve yeah so so the the traditional location we've in you know for the purposes of what we normally study here on the ten-week bottle state we've gotten a lot into the weeds on some some details here but I think they're really important because when you when you look at things from this long ago there's a lot of tradition a lot of time mixed in to what we understand from the Bible and this is one of those cases it seems where the tradition is probably wrong and when we when we look at where the tradition came from the scholarship they had versus the scholarship we have now it seems like it's wrong in and I wanted to just kind of get your opinion on this because this I think is is very important very pertinent to this discussion because there's a tremendous push and it's been going on for quite a while but there's a tremendous push amongst especially non-believing Bible scholars to reinterpret things in different ways because they don't believe the events and so they would look at something like this and a lot of people would say well see you know you can't believe what Paul says in Romans 1 about all of the myriad of social issues we're dealing with the United States around the world because those are archaic in ancient and when he didn't understand what we understand now and we need to you know allow homosexual marriage we allow all of these things nowadays because he didn't understand and so it can look similar to some people would say okay well the Mount Sinai that you know my Bible maps tell me is correct it's not the real Mount Sinai so how is that any different from you reinterpreting the book of Romans chapter 1 right right yeah I mean and again this goes back to you know and I'll just say my own personal conviction that I just feel in my spirit but we live in an age of where unbelief has multiplied tremendously over the past even just the past decade the atheists are some of the most aggressive overly con confident people and it's spreading you know it's not just here in the Western world it's spreading all over the world and so you have you know just sort of the secular unbelievers you have unbelievers within the field of you know Exodus scholarship at which by the way just as a side note I can't imagine a more depressing life than to say I'm a scholar of the Bible and I don't believe any of it you know a lot of them yeah it's just that I mean what a horrible existence but but yeah there's plenty of them and then as an anecdote when I was on my way home and I've told this story several times I was in Amsterdam and I got on the plane and I was sitting next to this guy and from your trip to Saudi on sino yeah and I was just glowing you know I mean I was just looking at the pictures on my phone saying I don't believe what just happened the past few days because you know and we haven't even got into all of the archaeological and just when when you hear about it it's fascinating when you go there and I say this and people told me this and I go well we'll see you go there and you absolutely can tell that this is the real deal everything falls into place you're like if this isn't the real Mount Sinai then someone like the only one that could have done this is God and he's completely Punk in all of us because it's just like everything is exactly where it should be and it's like untouched like it's just it's the strangest thing but so I'm looking at pictures and I'm going what just happened this past week this was just been a crazy journey this guy's sitting next to me and I can tell that he's I could just tell by his accent that he's you know a Jew from New York and he starts making small talk and he says where you coming from you coming from Zurich and I said no you know believe it or not I was just in Saudi Arabia and he said well what in the world were you doing there and I said well believe it or not I said I think I was just at the real Mount Sinai and immediately says oh you know none of that stuff's true you know that's all myth right and I look and I said well what are you talking about I said are you are you uh you know observant you yeah I go to synagogue he goes but you know the Bible's just here to teach us lessons it's not real history yeah he says German higher critical scholarship has just proven this stuff a long time ago and I looked at him I said I said wait a minute I said I'm the Gentile here I said don't you realize that German higher critical scholarship which has come to sort of be the foundation of much biblical scholarship was rooted in an anti-semitic anti Judaic program 2-digit and he goes all that's not true and I'm going I'm looking at him and I'm going here's Deuteronomy 32 playing out right in front of us I'm the Gentile I'm the foolish person who was an on people and I'm trying to convince you of the truth of your own of your own scriptures you're supposed to be the light to the world and so you've got unbeliever unbelief within the Jewish world you've got unbelief within the academic community you've got unbelief everywhere you've got unbelief in the Arab Muslim world and I'm convinced that part of the reason why it has been there in in in Saudi Arabia the heart of Sunni Islam is because he has a testimony and he's going to declare to the Jewish community you guys are supposed to be the ones that are every year gathering together celebrating Passover in order to remember yeah and you forgotten and he's gonna say remember remember this he's gonna say to the unbelievers remember this and you know I you know again maybe this is just something I'm getting personally excited about but I look at the Jesus Movement is the greatest revival in American history in recent you know the past 100 years going all the way back to Azusa and one of the primary factors driving that was the fact that Israel was reestablished as a state 1948 took Jerusalem in 67 people were looking at events on the ground realizing the Bible is true and when I look at Mount Sinai being publicly brought out to the world there's gonna be a lot of controversy no question but the evidence is so self explanatory that I'm convinced when people look at it it's going to sort of spark the next Jesus movement if you will at least that's what I'm praying into because I've seen it myself I've felt it and I really believe it's it's going to play this part in in the days that we're living so the thing that I love about this you know you've got nations that the Lord says he loves and Isaiah says he loves Egypt Assyria in Israel Minoo and we know that in Israel the Temple Mount is proclaimed a holy place you know but there's only one other place on planet Earth to my knowledge that the Lord says this is holy ground and it's a mountain in what we call Saudi Arabia the heart of Islam and so in America we're taught to you know the new cycle and everything wants us afraid and an angry and Muslims and and and again as Christians we have irreconcilable differences with Islam but not with the people the Lord loves these people this there's a holy mountain holy ground in the midst of Saudi Arabia you know and so I love the fact that the Lord did that because now in our modern context you know it just reiterates something he loves these people mm-hmm you know he doesn't love their ideology I don't believe he loves their you know their their religion but he loves the people there and I think there is such a powerful redemptive thing in it being in in you know Saudi Arabia as opposed to the Sinai Peninsula what were no one has really ever lived I mean almost uninhabited for all of history so check this out so you can point to there's not too many passages that you can point to in the Old Testament that clearly indicate you pointed to Isaiah 19 clearly indicates that the Lord will have a mighty remnant within the heart of the Islamic world in Egypt in Assyria talking wait a minute isn't that the place that Isis just had its capital of its Caliphate you know you go yeah right there in Iraq and Syria the Lord is going to have a mighty remnant well there's another passage which is one of the most glorious passages in the whole Bible about the restored kingdom of God the restored Kingdom of Israel and sighs a uh-60 arise and shine for your light has come you know your lightest finally come the glory of the lord has risen upon you behold as a returned deep darkness covers the people that's the that's the season we're in right now deep darkness covers the people's but the Lord will rise upon you his glory will will shine upon you and then it says this multitudes of camels of Midian will cover your land and it says all the flocks of Kedar and to buy off you go wait a minute what are we talking about here Isaiah now again most illiterate Old Testament illiterate Christians we just go I don't know a couple Old Testament names we skip on yeah it says not a handful not a whole bunch a multitude of people bringing camels with resources to build the temple of God will be coming up from Saudi Arabia that excites me that excites and they're going up to worship the king in Zion the holy one in Zion and so I go Lord you said there's gonna be a revival in that part of the world now we could say well they're all gonna come to faith after he returns and I gotta that may be the case but I think that we could make a good biblical case and I think as intercessors we should push in for the idea that that's gonna start before he returns and so we've got Scripture we've actually got solid scripture that this part of the world is gonna see revival so I think again something really big is is unfolding oh I love that and so we've gone we've had a long conversation we've gone way over time but I really appreciate you coming and sitting down I really do encourage you to check out Joel's new book the Mount Sinai in Arabia I also we didn't get a chance to talk about it all but I encourage you to check out his book the mystery of catastrophe just a wonderful wonderful book that you co-wrote with tonight Nathan graves and I think graves and just a wonderful book encourage you to check both of those books out check Joel's his YouTube show out and and and we're gonna have links to all of that is there let people know any other way that they can get ahold of you if they're interested where they can find your resources yeah it's like you said Joel Joel's trumpet calm my email by the way I'll probably need to post this somewhere is at Joel's trumpet calm and yeah so we've got a couple new books that we've just released as well as I've got a whole nine class DVD or flash drive that I've done on the material in the book if you're not a reader and we've got another book that I'm pressing in and working on that we'll follow up on this material dealing with the return of Jesus I believe the Exodus gives us the greatest pattern for the return of Jesus in all of Scripture and I'd say I'm probably more excited about that than anything I'm excited to see that book when you get it out - yeah so hopefully this summer all right well thank you so much for joining us on the 10 week Bible study again we've gone long but I think this is such a wonderful discussion I just I thank you so much Joel for for making time and sitting down with us you bet man thanks so much wrap me on I am your host deer in Hibbs and I can't wait to see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: 10 Week Bible Study

Views: 10,243

Rating: 4.8873239 out of 5

Keywords: bible study, bible, preacher, jesus, christian, mount sinai, mount sinai in arabia, sinai, joel richardson, ryan mauro, ron wyatt, jebel al lawz

Id: z5nSOR4LAqo

Length: 63min 26sec (3806 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 22 2019