The More They Dig, the More They Find (God’s Word is True & Righteous Altogether)

The world desperately needs a hope that is all-encompassing, and as this world spirals down to its end, it will be ever so abundantly clear.  Confusion of face and depression will prevail. Students of God’s beautiful Book are keenly aware of II Timothy 3:12-13:

12 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.

The next couple of sentences will remind the older ones among us of a popular song in the USA in the 1960s.  A female vocalist sings about her love for her man, but the focus of the lyrics in this feature is on an all-encompassing hope:  It’s a hope so high, you can’t get over it; so deep you can’t get under it; and so wide, you can’t get around it.  God’s own know this marvelous hope—that it is bigger than life’s darkest circumstances, bigger than devils and governments, even bigger than death itself, which this hope swallows in whole in one Holy Ghost gulp.  The redeemed know it as THE BLESSED HOPE!  It is life and life more abundantly, here and eternally in Christ Jesus in God’s new heaven and new earth.  The soundness and security of this glorious hope is far above the machinations of men and devils.  How beautiful are the Words of our Lord Jesus Christ:

🕇 John 3:16:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  

🕇 John 11:25-26:

25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

Dear visitor, do you know this blessed hope?  It all begins at the place Jesus calls BORN AGAIN. John 3:3:

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.  

In just a moment, I will invite you to follow me in a simple prompt, and if you do, this glorious hope will begin in you.  Today, all your sin and shame will be washed away.  Today, all of Satan’s bondages in your life will be broken; the bigger, the better.  Today, you will become brand new.  Your eternal soul is in your hand.  Here is the prompt I promised: Click onto Further with Jesus for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God. NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 9:24-25:

24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

GOD SAID, Genesis 37:3:

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.

GOD SAID, Exodus 17:14:

And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.

MAN SAID: Jesus doesn’t do anything for me.  I don’t need or want Him.  I’m my own man!  I make my own destiny! I’m wise and I play video games for hours just about every day.  Cool, huh?

Now THE RECORD: Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature 1135 that will once again certify the supernatural inerrancy of God’s majority-text Holy Bible.   All of these faith-building features are archived here in text and streaming audio for the edification of the blood-bought and as ammunition in the battle for the souls of men.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one. 

Thank you for visiting.  May the beauty of God’s countenance shine upon you and all that you put your hand unto.

The more they dig, the more they find that the Bible is perfectly accurate, down to every jot and every tittle, yet the world’s academics continue to deny. For them to acknowledge tis truth means the loss of all: Their heavy expense of time and money in education, their careers and credibility, even the mortgage and the car payment.  God and His Word must be resisted at all costs.  As one of their own, evolutionist Richard Lewontin, explains:

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover, that materialism is absolute, so we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [End of quote]

That’s all it is. 

Archaeology is one of the four proof platforms GodSaidManSaid uses to establish the inerrant glory of God’s beautiful Book, the Holy Bible. This category includes the disciplines of archaeology, geology, paleontology, sociology, ancient history, microbiology, and more.  You can be sure, child of faith, that your Holy Bible is true and righteous altogether and has never been controverted by its skeptics.  This certainly and especially includes all the amazing miraculous events it records.

Several paragraphs from the GodSaidManSaid feature “Joseph’s Famine (Minimalists Minimalized)” follow:

In the following excerpts from Encyclopedia of Bible Life you’ll find a quote from one William F. Albright who stood a giant in the field of archaeology. He was an orientalist and Professor of Semitic Languages at Johns Hopkins University. Albright was Director of American Schools in Jerusalem and lead excavations in numerous places. A bibliography of Albright’s work was written by Henry M Orlinsky, where 473 items were listed. The following is from Encyclopedia of Bible Life:

Nothing that has happened in the past fifty years has put the Bible on sure a footing as the development of biblical archaeology. Without starting out to “prove that the Bible is true,” research has a posteriori come upon facts confirming and illustrating point after point, especially of Old Testament record. Higher criticism has received a blow and must henceforth be considered only in connection with the findings of archaeology. We now know that Abraham was not merely a Mesopotamian folk hero but a historic personality, though not contemporary with Hammurabi, whose date is not 2000 B.C. but between c.1728 B.C. and 1686 B.C. We now believe, with Albright, that Jericho fell later than c.1375 B.C., (Others accept 1400 or 1250). Confirmation has been found of the destruction and desertion of Shiloh by the Philistines after the battle of Ebenezer and the capture of the ark, C.1050 B.C. Exodus I has been confirmed with the discovery of Egyptian Tanis and Pithom (Tell Retabeh), store cities of Ramesses II. The antiquity of the Song of Deborah has been demonstrated, and the pushing back of dates of portions of the Old Testament once placed in the post-Exilic period has come about. Ras Shamra in northern Syria has given us not only the lost Canaanite religious literature but has helped us construct the progress of Israel’s loftier religion by tracing its steps of ascent from the worship ways of its neighbors. We know now, since Megiddo and Ezion-geber excavations, much about the economic foundations of Solomon’s kingdom and the background of his Temple-building and chariot cities. Cross-references synthesizing Babylon with Palestinian history in the sixth century B.C. have built up satisfactory conclusions.

As Albright has pointed out in Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, the most brilliant and searching scrutiny of science has not lessened the pre-eminence of the Bible as a masterpiece of literature and an absolutely unique religious document. Nothing has been unearthed which need disturb the faith of Hebrew or Christian, but much has been excavated which heightens this faith. “No major contention of Scripture has been proved unhistoric.”

Those paragraphs were written over 70 years ago and the situation for the higher critics has certainly not improved.

The archaeologists’ spades continue to dig and God’s word is continually confirmed. You would suppose at least one uncontested victory for the doctors of unbelief, but alas…not one.

A few final excerpts follow from Dr. Grant Jeffreys book, The Signature of God:

Dr. Nelson Glueck, the most outstanding Jewish archaeologist of the last century, wrote in his book Rivers in the Desert:

It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries. They form tesserae in the vast mosaic of the Bible’s almost incredibly correct historical memory.

Another respected scholar, Dr. J. O. Kinnaman, declared:

Of the hundreds of thousands of artifacts found by the archeologists, not one has ever been discovered that contradicts or denies one word, phrase, clause, or sentence of the Bible, but always confirms and verifies the facts of the biblical record.

Well-known language scholar Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, formerly professor of Semitic philology at Princeton Theological Seminary, made the following statement:

After forty-five years of scholarly research in biblical textual studies and in language study, I have come now to the conviction that no man knows enough to assail the truthfulness of the Old Testament. When there is sufficient documentary evidence to make an investigation, the statement of the Bible, in the original text, has stood the test. [End of quotes]

Antagonists of the Book challenge every sentence. One frequent challenge this feature will address is the question of whether Moses could write. The Moses story begins with the Hebrew people enslaved in Egypt.  Skeptics first challenge whether there ever were a Moses or a Jewish people serving as bond slaves in the land of the pharaohs.  The so-called wisest among us continue to challenge each chapter of Moses’ story:

◉ Was Baby Moses placed in an ark of bulrushes and floated down the Nile to escape sudden death at the hand of the pharaoh? 

◉ Did Pharaoh’s daughter find the Hebrew baby and raise him as her own son, calling his name Moses? 

◉ After 40 years of exile from Egypt, did Moses return to speak unto Pharaoh God’s command to “let my people go?”

◉ Had Egypt really been devastated by deadly plagues? 

◉ Did Moses part the Red Sea to allow Israel to escape?

◉ And, of course: Did Moses really pen the first five God-authored books of the Bible? 

The critics will continue to challenge even though all of the bullet points I just mentioned are proven beyond any reasonable doubt, leaving only the unreasonable.

It’s obvious to the higher critics that God and His Bible are mistaken when it states that Moses could write.  God, that’s if there is a God, got it wrong when He speaks to Moses in Exodus 17:14:

And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.

Moses and the Hebrew children are commanded to write numerous times in the Bible, as in Exodus 24:4:

And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.

Let’s consider the record.  The title of an Acts & Facts feature by Dr. Clifford Wilson reads, “Ebla: It’s Impact on Bible Records.”  Excerpts follow:

Tell Mardikh—the ancient Ebla—is on the main road to Aleppo in Northern Syria, being not quite half way between Hamath and Aleppo.  It is nearer to Aleppo than to Hamath.  There is a mound and a small village about one kilometer off the highway.  Professor Paolo Matthiae of the Rome University has been excavating there since 1964, but his work was not spectacular until 1968 when his team produced a statue dedicated to the goddess Eshtar, and bearing the name of Ibbit-Lim, a king of Ebla.  This endorsed the positive identification of the city.  The kingdom of Ebla had previously been known in Sumerian, Akkadian, and Egyptian texts, and the excavators had good clues when they began digging in this 50-feet high mound. Now their hopes were bright for the future. 

In the 1975 season, some 15,000 tablets were recovered.  To bring the report up to date, the excavators recently reported (with a smile!) that 1976 was a poor season—only 1,600 tablets were found!  One tablet stated that the city had a population of 260,000. 

The vocabularies at Ebla were distinctively Semitic: the word “to write” is k-t-b (as in Hebrew), while that for “king” is “malikum,” and that for “man” is “adamu.” The closeness to Hebrew is surprising.

It is relevant to note that some of the tablets deal with judicial proceedings.  There are elaborations as to the penalties incurred when a person is injured, and there are details about various trials.  Some of these points make foolish the former criticisms against the possibility of the existence of a Mosaic law-code. Here is a civilization about 1,000 years earlier than that of Moses, and in writing it gives all sorts of details about the administration of justice.  It is clearly a highly developed civilization, with concepts of justice and individual rights to the fore.  To suggest that Moses could not have dealt with such cases is ludicrous.

In the public lecture series referred to above, Professor David Noel Freedman pointed out that about 17,000 tablets and significant fragments have been found at this site, and they date to approximately 2,400 BC to 2,250 BC. This would be about four times the grand total of all tablets found, dating to that period, from all other sites. There nearest in magnitude for the number of tablets would be Mari, dating several hundred years later.

[Editor’s note: The dating of these tablets places Ebla’s history immediately after the flood of Noah.]

A number of personal names in the Ebla documents are very similar to names used at later times in the Old Testament.  One such name is Michael (mi-ka-ilu) which means “Who is like El?”  A related form, also in the Ebla texts, is mi-ka-ya, which is well-known in the Bible, with the ya ending replacing the el. Other names are e-sa-um (Esau), da-‘u-dum (David), sha-‘u’-lum (Saul), and Ish-ma-Il (Ishmael), this last meaning “Il (El—God) has heard me.”

Other examples given by Professor Pettinato are En-na-ni-ll which gave over to En-na-ni-Ya (ll/Ya has mercy on me); A-dam-Malik (man of Milik); ‘il-ha-il,” (Il is strength); Eb-du-Ra-sa-ap (Servant of Rasaph); Ish-a-bu (a man is the father); Ish-i-lum (A man is the god); I-sa-Ya (Ya has gone forth); I-ad-Damu (the hand of Damu); and Ib-na-Malik (Milik has created).  Hebrew scholars recognize remarkable similarities to later Hebrew in the Old Testament, and Professor Pettinato himself states, in the Biblical Archaeologist referred to above, “Many of these names occur in the same form in the Old Testament, so that a certain interdependence between the culture of Ebla and that of the Old Testament must be granted.”

One aspect of special interest to Bible students is that a number of Old Testament cities are referred to.  There are cities that were previously known in 1^st and 2^nd Millennium records, but now they are referred to in these 3^rd Millennium BC tablets. There is Salim, possibly the city of Melchizedec, Hazor, Lachish, Megiddo, Gaza, Dor, Sinai, Ashtaroth, Joppa, and Damascus.  Of special interest is Urusalima (Jerusalem), this being the earliest known reference to this city.

Two of the towns mentioned are Sodom and Gomorrah.  Here we are transported back to about 2,300 BC, and we find that these towns were regularly visited, being on the route of the King’s Highway that ran down from Damascus.  There are actually references to five “cities of the Plain” (to use the Biblical term at Genesis 14:2), and these were Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar. We are told in that same verse that an earlier name for Zoar was Bela.

Another of the towns referred to is Carchemish, and Professor Pettinato made the point that the prophet Isaiah (at Isaiah 10:9) has a remarkable knowledge of this name, as shown in the text preserved at Isaiah 10:9.  This preserves the ancient name of the god “Chemosh,” the Moabite god known in later Bible times.

There is a creation record remarkably similar to the Genesis account.  There are dealings with Hittites long before Abraham purchased the Cave of Machpelah from the Hittites of his time—it is not so long since it was argued there were no Hittites so early. There are treaties and covenants similar to those in Exodus, and for the protection of society there are laws that point towards the concept of justice so prominent in Exodus.  There are ritualistic sacrifices long before those of Leviticus, and before the Canaanites from whom some critics claimed the Hebrews borrowed them.  There are prophets proclaiming their message long before the nevi’im (prophets) of the Old Testament, though the Old Testament’s superiority in the realms of ethics, morality, and spiritual values stands unchallenged.  The Old Testament records have that indefinable something that is different.  Metaphorically, they bear within them the imprint of the finger of God.

The story has only just begun and there will be echoes from Eber for generations to come.  It is at least thought-provoking that findings such as those at Ebla consistently support the Bible as a thoroughly acceptable record.  To this writer it is far more than a wonderful history text: it is God’s Word of Truth, His revelation of Himself in the Person of His Son. [End of quotes]

The minimalists are again minimalized. 

The ancient Canaanites, the offspring of Noah’s cursed grandson Canaan, date back to immediately after the global flood. According to the Bible, the land they inhabited, called Canaan land, was taken from them by God and given to Abraham and the children of Israel.  It was Joshua who began the conquest of Canaan at the city of Jericho.

The following headline from the Christian Post reads, “Palestinian Farmer Discovers Artifact Linked to Canaanites from the Bible''s Old Testament." Several paragraphs follow:

A newly-discovered stone statuette over 4,500 years old depicting the face of an ancient goddess is displayed during a press conference at the Ministry of Antiques and Tourism in Gaza City on April 26, 2022.

A Palestinian farmer has discovered the head of a 4,500-year-old statue of Anat, an idol of the ancient people God ordered the Israelites to drive out of the Promised Land for breaking His commandments and worshipping false gods. 

The limestone statue is about 8 inches tall and carved into the head is a face wearing a serpent as a crown. Anat was an idol of the Canaanites, a group of people God ordered driven out of Israel in the Old Testament.

The Hamas-run Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the head’s discovery during a press conference in Gaza on Tuesday.  The New Arab reported that Jamal Abu Rida, the ministry’s director-general of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, estimated the statue dates back to 2,500 BC. 

“Anat was the goddess of love, beauty, and war in the Canaanite mythology,” Abu Rida said.

Abu Rida argued that the statue made a political point, stating that its “presence” disproves “the Zionist claim that the land of Palestine is a land without a people for a people without a land.” He also maintained that the farmer who made the discovery, Nidal Abu Eid, found the artifact on Monday in the al-Qarara town of Khan Younis. 

“I found it by chance when I was cultivating my land. It was muddy but when I washed it with water, I realized that it is a precious thing,” Abu Eid told The New Arab.

The farmer initially considered selling the goddess statue but changed his mind when an archaeologist informed him of its “great archaeological value.”

According to the Bible Project, the Canaanites occupied Israel, the land God had promised to Abraham.  They were descendants of Canaan, the grandson of Noah, who was cursed for his father’s sin against Noah in Genesis 9:20-25.

The Canaanites angered the Lord by worshipping idols and sacrificing children to their false gods. These actions violate the first and second of God’s Ten Commandments, which declare “You shall have no other Gods before me,” and “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth,” respectively.  [End of quotes]

The Canaanite statue of Anat is dated to 2,500 BC.  The curse that Noah spoke over Ham’s son Canaan dated to approximately 2,348 BC.  The Canaanites once possessed the land called Canaan, which is now the land called Israel, just like the Bible said.

The May 13, 2020 headline in the UK publication Express reads: “Matches the Bible!” Why Multicolored Coat Discovered in Egypt Tomb “Could be Joseph’s.” Excerpts follow:

Egypt experts were stunned when they discovered a statue of a “high official” in Goshen, decorated with what appears to be a multicolored coat, leading them to speculate it could represent Joseph from the Bible.

In the book of Genesis, Joseph is an important figure, who was repeatedly sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, after his father gave him a stunning multicolored coat, suggesting he would become the head of the family.  But, Joseph rose to become vizier, the second most powerful man in Egypt, by structuring the agriculture and taxation procedures so that great storehouses of grain were utilized over the seven good years, with the result that there would be an abundance of food during the seven bad years.  When the bad years came, there was a famine in his hometown and Joseph’s estranged brothers and his father Jacob made their way to bountiful Egypt, where they discovered to their great surprise that the despised brother was not only still alive, but both able and willing to save them and provide for them.

Said to have lived until the age of 110, Joseph made the children of Israel swear that when they left the land of Egypt they would take his bones with them to the Promised Land, and on his death, his body was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.

But, experts speaking during the Patterns of Evidence documentary revealed how an incredible discovery of a grand palace and statue in the eastern delta of the Nile could reveal more to the story.

Egyptologist Dr. David Rohl said in 2019: “Look at the evidence you’ve got here, right at the beginning at the heart of this community, at the end of the 12^th Dynasty, we see a Syrian house appear.

“This type of house is found in North Syria, the area where Abraham (Joseph’s great-grandfather) came from—it’s exactly the same style of house you would expect Jacob to build for himself in Egypt.

“After this house of Jacob is built, eventually it is flattened, and on top of it, an Egyptian palace is constructed.

“However, the occupant was not Egyptian, it had courtyards, colonnades, audience chambers, even a robing room. It obviously belonged to some high official of state who was very important.”

Dr. Rohl revealed the evidence that this could have been dedicated to Joseph.

He added: “When somebody gets a palace like this given to them, it means they are being honored for what they’ve done for the state.

“In the garden, behind the palace, the archaeologists found 12 main graves, with memorial chapels on top of them.

“Think about it, how many sons did Jacob have? How many tribes were there? 12.

“What’s also amazing is the palace had a facade, a portico with 12 pillars, so you’ve got 12 sons, 12 tribes, 12 pillars and 12 tombs.”

Presenter Tim Mahoney revealed how an incredible statue was found on the grounds of the palace.

He said: “One of these 12 graves was very special because it was a pyramid tomb, this in itself is extraordinary because only Pharaohs and Queens had pyramid tombs at this time.

“Yet the person buried in this tomb was not a King, but he was honoured with a King’s burial.

“Inside the chapel of the tomb was a statue, what we know from the statue is that this man had red hair, he had pale yellow skin, he had a throwing stick across his shoulder and on the back of his shoulder, we see the faintest remains of paint – coloured stripes from a multicoloured coat.”

Dr Rohl claimed all the evidence pointed to the story of Joseph.

He added: “That matches exactly with the story of Joseph in the Bible.

“The multicoloured coat was a gift which shows that he was the favourite of the Father.

“It almost becomes his insignia, this coat, it’s the thing we remember about him most of all, there is nothing else like this in the whole of Egyptian history.”

Another Egyptologist, Charles Aling, said it would be hard to suggest this tomb was made for anyone else.

He added: “It would not be unusual for a tomb to have a statue, but it’s unusual to have one this large, twice the size of a normal human being.

“This tells us that it was a very important person, of course, this is not a pharaoh’s tomb or palace, but the man who lived there, you can identify his nationality by looking at the fragments of the statue.

“Three things, the hairstyle he has, which we often call the mushroom hairstyle, the weapon he carries over his shoulder – a throwing stick – and the colouration of the skin, it’s yellow.

“All those things indicate that this would have been a Cyril Palestinian, either it is Joseph, or it’s somebody who has a career remarkably similar to him, it’s an incredible find.”  [End of quotes]

Discovery after discovery certifies the incredible accuracy of the Holy Scriptures.  We need to know it’s true and righteous altogether because absolutely everything depends upon it—and I mean EVERYTHING!

GOD SAID, Genesis 9:24-25:

24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

GOD SAID, Genesis 37:3:

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.

GOD SAID, Exodus 17:14:

And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.

MAN SAID: Jesus doesn’t do anything for me.  I don’t need or want Him.  I’m my own man!  I make my own destiny! I’m wise and I play video games for hours just about every day.  Cool, huh?

 

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

GodSaidManSaid, “Joseph’s Famine (Minimalists Minimalized)”

Hoare, C., “‘Matches the Bible!’ Why Multicolored Coat Discovered in Egypt Tomb ‘Could be Joseph’s,’” Express, May 13, 2020

Kamman, S., “Palestinian Farmer Discovers Artifact Linked to Canaanites from the Bible’s Old Testament,” The Christian Post, May 2, 2022

Wilson, C., “Ebla: Its Impact on Bible Records,” Acts & Facts, April 1, 1977

• Go Further With Christ
• Email To a Friend
• Comments or Questions?