This week marks the beginning of Hanukkah, the “festival of lights.” The holiday commemorates an event during the Maccabean revolt in the second century BC, when the candelabrum in the Jerusalem Temple miraculously burned for eight days despite only having enough oil for one.

While Hanukkah is not in the Bible per se, and the events around it not scripture, it certainly is an interesting story and a recent discovery outside of Jerusalem by the Israel Antiquities Authority is adding credibility to the beloved tale of the Maccabees and their fight for Jewish sovereignty.

“And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” Genesis 32:28 (KJB)

Pray for the Jews and the nation of Israel as they celebrate Hanukkah this year, they grow ever-closer to the coming time of Jacob’s trouble and the great Tribulation. It will be during that time when they truly will discover Who the real ‘light of the world’ is, and it will come at great cost. Hanukkah this year runs from November 28th to December 6th.

“Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.” Revelation 1:7 (KJB)

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Did Archaeologists Just Find Evidence of Hanukkah Stories?

FROM YAHOO NEWS: But Hanukkah isn’t just about energy efficiency; broadly speaking it celebrates the successful struggle for Jewish independence. Now archaeologists have unearthed the charred remains of a fort destroyed by Jewish rebels more that 2,000 years ago and claim that it offers evidence of the Hanukkah-related rebellion.

In a statement released last week, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced that they had discovered the burned wooden beams and ruins of a fortified Hellenistic structure in the Lachish Forest. The remains of the small 15m (50-foot) x 15m fort were unearthed about an hour’s journey to the southwest of Jerusalem on the summit of a high hill in the Judean foothills. The position of the structure gave it a clear vantage point over the neighboring city of Maresha, the largest Hellenistic center in the area.

Minister of Construction and Housing, Jerusalem and Heritage, Zeev Elkin: “The impressive discoveries from the excavations in the Lachish region demonstrate the history of our great and wonderful land and the story of Hanukkah. The Landmarks program led by the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, for which I am responsible, continues to develop national and historical heritage sites on a daily basis. Over the upcoming Hanukkah holiday, we will be marking Heritage Week throughout the country and I invite the general public to visit, discover and experience our national heritage sites.”

Minister of Culture and Sports, Chili Tropper: “The Israel Antiquities Authority’s fascinating new discovery is a classic example of how traditional, well-known and well-loved stories become part of the historical and archaeological record. The building’s excavation reflects the glorious roots of the  Jewish people in the Land of Israel and brings the Hanukkah stories to life.

Saar Ganor, Vladik Lifshits, and Ahinoam Montagu, excavation directors on behalf of the IAA, said that the site “provides tangible evidence of the Hanukkah stories. It appears that we have discovered a building that was part of a fortified line erected by the Hellenistic army commanders to protect the large Hellenistic city of Maresha from a Hasmonean offensive. However, the finds from the site show that the Seleucid defenses were unsuccessful; the building was badly burnt and devastated by the Hasmoneans.” READ MORE

Archaeologists investigated the destruction of Tall el-Hammam and discovered an event similar to the description of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by God recorded in Genesis 19.

Faith is a funny thing, either you have it or you don’t, and even the discovery of overwhelming physical evidence will not sway the unbeliever to change their position. Today’s article on the discovery of proof-positive, physical evidence of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, modern-day Tall el-Hammam, as contained in the Genesis 19 account has just been found, and is it creating a flood of new believers in the accuracy and fidelity of God’s preserved word? Nope.

“Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;…And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the LORD: And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt.” Genesis 19:24,27-29 (KJB)

Archaeologists have unearthed physical proof of what points to the destruction of Tell el-Hammam in the Jordan valley, the region of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament, and what they found was really wild. They found evidence of an incredible explosion that occurred in the skies above ancient Sodom, an explosion so intense that building down below were destroyed and things were literally vaporized. Yet these highly-educated scientists and archaeologists come away from this discovery no more a believer in the Bible than before they made it, because proof will not sway the stone-cold heart of man that is set against God. Only grace through faith in Jesus Christ can accomplish that.

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I loved reading about this discovery, and seeing what the scientists found, but it didn’t increase my faith because I already believed in the Genesis 19 account, along with everything else contained in my King James Holy Bible. For those who believe in the Almighty God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, no proof is required. For those who don’t believe, no amount of proof will ever be enough. Our article here today on the ‘cosmic destruction’ of Tall el-Hammam is “proof” of that.

The cause of the destruction of Tall el-Hammam, Sodom, was a cosmic airburst caused by a comet or meteorite.

FROM THE JERUSALEM POST: Tell el-Hammam in the Jordan Valley might have inspired the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, according to a new study that has spanned 15 years. In the study, published in the journal Nature on Monday, archaeologists researched the remains of Tell el-Hammam in an attempt to discover what destroyed the ancient city during the Middle Bronze Age. During the period, there were roughly 50,000 people living in the area of the Jordan Valley in three cities: Tell el-Hammam, Jericho, and Tell Nimrin, with Tell el-Hammam the biggest of the three, implying that until its destruction, it would have been the political center of the area. Radiocarbon dating dates the destruction to within 50 years of 1650 BCE.

Examination of the remains revealed evidence of a destructive event that involved high temperatures, such as pottery pieces that were melted and boiled on the exterior, but normal on the inside. The buildings of Tell el-Hammam were made of mud bricks, some five stories tall. In the upper part of the city, the destructive force demolished the buildings to the height of their foundations in the walls, and little mud-brick remained. Of the palace that was in this part of the city, the first floor walls and the upper stories are missing, and most of the mud-brick was pulverized.

In the lower part of the city, the buildings suffered more severe damage, and researchers found evidence of heat-fracturing in the remains.

The towers in the wall that surrounded the city were also destroyed, with mud-brick remains only existing at the height of the towers’ foundation. To try to discover what could have caused this destruction, the researchers compiled a list of possible events and tested their probability relative to the evidence found at the site.

They initially examined the possibility of a fire, warfare, volcanic eruption, earthquake or lightning, but concluded that these events were unlikely to cause the kind of destruction that they found at the site, because none could have produced the intense heat required to cause the melting that they found.

Having dismissed these events, the researchers turned to two other possibilities: cosmic impact or a cosmic airburst.

The consequences of a crater-forming cosmic impact matched all the evidence found by the archaeologists, but it was dismissed as unlikely because no crater was found in the area. The most likely cause of destruction was a cosmic airburst caused by a comet or meteorite. The consequences of such an event also match the evidence found by the researchers, and using an impact calculator, they were able to estimate the details of the event, which also involved the shock wave hitting Jericho that was burned to the ground.

It can be assumed that the event that destroyed Tell el-Hammam would have been witnessed and recounted through the generations until the time of the biblical Sodom, at which point the event would have been an inspiration for the story, which tells of stones and fire falling from the sky to destroy the city. READ MORE

Tall el-Hammam Destroyed by Cosmic Air Burst 3,600 Years Ago

Many of you will already know about the new paper released by Bunch et al, titled “A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea”, the significance of which should not be underestimated.

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church

Archaeological excavations at the Yazılıkaya Rock Temple of the ancient Hittites in Turkey, which began almost 200 years ago, revealed an ancient calendar and a map of an underworld sitting under our feet.

In the Bible, the Hittites were one of the many peoples and nations that God told Joshua He would give into the hands of Israel, as part of His land grant promise to Abraham back in the book of Genesis. Today comes the incredible news that is rocking the world of biblical archaeology of ancient stone carvings made by the Hittites, that shows a bustling and terrifying underworld lurking just under our feet. Just as the Bible declares the location of Hell to be.

“Now after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD it came to pass, that the LORD spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” Joshua 1:1-5 (KJB)

For the past 200 years, biblical archaeologists have studied to decipher the meaning of these incredible stone carvings that date back over 3,200 years, so accurate that they correctly show the moon phases as well as any telescope we have here in 2021. The Hittites wanted people to know that there was a world underneath our world, which is absolutely true. But sadly, the Hittites worship many gods which are no gods, that served only to put them in the very place their stone carvings warn us about. Don’t be a Hittite, trust Jesus Christ and avoid the very real underworld completely.

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Stunning Hittite archaeological find: Is there really an ‘underworld’ under the earth? Yep!

FROM THE JERUSALEM POST: The paintings in the strange stone carvings, which were probably made about 3,200 years ago, include details of an “underworld” sitting beneath the earth. In the temple, discovered by French archaeologist and historian Charles Texier as early as 1834, limestone carvings depicting more than 90 different figures, including animals, monsters and gods, have been found.

It took almost 200 years to decipher the paintings, but researchers have determined that the representations are of a cosmos that includes the Earth, the sky and the “underworld” that show the vitality of the creation myth.

“They had a certain image of how creation happened,” says Zangger. He says the Hittites imagined that the world began in chaos, which became organised into three levels: “the underworld, and then the earth on which we walk, and then the sky”.

3200-year-old Hittite shrine in Turkey may be an ancient view of the cosmos

On one wall there are drawings of the goddess of the sun and the goddess of the storm, where one can see that gods were placed in the painting higher than the other figures. In contrast, on the eastern and western walls of the temple one can see the lesser people, the phases of the moon and the seasons, signifying “cycles and rebirth,” according to the researchers.

According to estimates, scholars estimate that in those days there were about 17 deities, each with a line marking between the gods. Also, in one of the rooms of the temple was a painting dedicated to the “underworld,” with testimonies of the god of the sword.

“We believe the temple fully represents a symbolic image of the universe, including its static levels – earth, sky and underworld, as well as the cyclical processes of renewal – day and night or summer and winter,” one researcher explained in an interview in an article published in the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology. READ MORE

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church