Abraham: Biblical Geographical History

Abraham: Biblical Geographical History by Kelly Durant 2-24-13

Hebrews 11:9 By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; 10 for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.11 By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.

2. What results do you get when you have 4 Jews counseling together? You get 5 opinions! Ha! When we visited the Holy Land we were privileged to see dozens of ruins that were uncovered, some just a few feet below the dirt, while others were under multiple layers of rock laid one culture on top the other over the past 4 millennia! It has taken multiple thousands of volunteers many decades to unearth all the hundreds of places to see that are in Israel.

When you are in Israel all you can think about is rocks, they cover every mountain, and they shape all the buildings and walls, they cover every sidewalk and every field. No wonder David proclaimed, Psalm 18:2 The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

3. How many of you can lift 50 pounds? That was our luggage limit; most of us can lift that much, right? But how would you move a rock that is as heavy as your car: Or even as heavy as 3.000 cars (600 tons)? We often think of the ancients as developing from the caveman stage, but this is not true as ancient man was very intelligent for building and they had many complex ways to quarry and transport massive rocks. The Bible confirms that the sons of Adam started building right away after leaving the Garden of Eden.

Gen 4: 16 Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. 17 And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son—Enoch.

4. Our history with God’s chosen begins at around 2,000 BC with Abraham. You may not be aware of this but there were people before the 1930’s that disputed that Abraham had never lived because they never uncovered the city hi was from. These doubters claimed that no City named Ur had ever been discovered and so the bible and all the people in it must be a myth. They were wrong! The City of Ur was uncovered in 1930 and it proved that Abraham had migrated a long way up and up and over to Israel. This is a lesson we must learn: Geography proves history which proves the Word of God as true!

5. Ancient man was created intelligent by God. The arch design, for example, was thought to have been developed by the Greeks a few hundred years before Christ but not far from Abraham’s arrival point in Israel they unearthed a gate with an arch and this city was more than 4,000 years old! Since it was one of the first cities in that area, Abraham himself may have passed through here. How amazing is that? Geography confirms history and God’s word is always true! God created man intelligent.

6. Geography and archaeology are revealing to us more and more how the ancients lived, how intelligent they were, how hard working they were, and how they worshiped God, either in truth by the knowledge of Abraham and Moses, or totally misguided by Satan doing human sacrifice and horrors. The art and written history records of the past prove that people were similar to you and me today. They needed to be near a water supply, have food, and shelter. But one thing is disturbingly evident, each culture that existed wanted to dominate totally over the other ones and wipe out all traces of the existence of the one they conquered.

7. Reflecting on Abraham in our land of rocks, there was a place of altar rock on which he was going to sacrifice his son, Isaac, but God stopped him and provided a ram instead and it is here on Mt. Moriah where the Mosque of Omar stands today. The other son of Abraham, Ishmael, being the half-brother of Isaac is today to father of the Arab nations and these two descendants have had family feuds over the land of Israel and the rights to the ownership of that rock alter ever since. I thought it was funny how they each referred to each other as their cousin, but what is not funny is the serious dislike they have had for each other for almost 4,000 years!