November 2023: Israel- A Nation Robbed of its History

Steve:
Welcome to the BC Messenger Podcast. This is Real Science, Real Bible, Real History, and Real World. And here we are, season two, episode four. I'm here as always with my wife, Jennifer. The two of us host this podcast each month. And we do thank you for joining us for this, our 16th episode of the podcast.

Jennifer:
As the podcast goes out this month, we are right on the doorstep of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Steve:
It is November. Yes, that's right.

Jennifer:
So I want to say I'm thankful for our listeners. Thankful for you listening into the podcast. Really, from all over the world, we have stats that we can see of our listeners around the world. Of course, greatly concentrated in North America, in the United States, some in Canada. But there are dots on that map all over the world. Just the past six months of people who have listened to the podcast, South America, Australia, Europe, United Kingdom. Just different locations all over the world. And we're so privileged to live in a time where if you have a message, you can send it out.

Steve:
Yeah, that's right. And you don't have to have a whole lot to do it. I would love to talk in our podcast about the technology we use. We don't have time for that, but really minimal amount of equipment. And we really are blessed to be able to do this on a computer and then put it out, this very, very important information. And we are thankful for you that listen. You're the early listeners. We're in our 16th episode, but really that's not that many when you think about the whole scheme of things. Some of you have been with us from the very beginning of this, and some of you are just joining us. Maybe this is the first episode that you've listened to.

Jennifer:
Some are brand new. We want to welcome you, of course, and bring you up to speed with all the many topics we have here. But we do think of you as our friends, and we hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving as we roll right into the month of November.

Steve:
And we do pray that this podcast brings you new ideas, encouragement, increases your faith in God and in God's Word. Jen, give us our monthly roundup of content as you do each month, our bullet points for what this podcast episode is going to cover.

Jennifer:
Okay. So our featured topic is going to be centering in on the nation of Israel. Israel, a nation robbed of its history. That'll be our main discussion topic this month. Then we will have a quick quote of note from Winston Churchill, moving into our truth in time segment. And we do have something extra special. I'm not going to give away what that is, but when we get to the truth in time section, we will share that with you. And then a quick section on the anti-aging vitamins and the aging work research going on here with Dr. Aardsma's biblically oriented work. And then Helen's view, she will be sharing something reaching back 51 years ago to something that Dr. Aardsma wrote as a high schooler. And then I guess that wraps it up. That's the rundown.

Steve:
All right. Well, as we record this podcast here in 2023, November...

Jennifer:
It's October right now.

Steve:
At the recording of it, it's October. It'll come out in November. Thank you for straightening out on that. We all know that Israel, the nation of Israel, has been in the news recently. We are on our featured topic here on this podcast. Our featured topic today is in the news is what we're calling it. And Israel, a nation robbed of its history. Many of us have been greatly concerned and praying for the situation in the Middle East. The Middle East has been unsettled, unstable for many, many years. But here we are again with a very unstable situation. And this one's obviously heartbreaking and very bad. And our work here at the biblical chronologist is intertwined, necessarily intertwined with the nation of Israel in a very big way, a very practical way.

Jennifer:
Of course, we know that down through history, Israel as a nation has suffered in many ways. They've come under military attack. They didn't have a homeland for many years. They were scattered out. They've come under various attacks, some in recent history in the past 100 years. That just breaks our hearts to think about. And then some, of course, even going way back into ancient history. These are real ways that real people have suffered. But today we want to look at it from a little bit of a different angle. Israel as a nation.

Steve:
Israel as a nation having been robbed of something we don't often think about.

Jennifer:
But something so precious, invaluable to them.

Steve:
And not just to the nation of Israel, which we're going to get into. But the ripple effects that stems out to all kinds of things and problems that it's creating. This thing that Israel has been robbed of, is it's very history. Israel's history is the most ancient, detailed history of any culture, of any people group in the world. Now that's really something to say. This small group of people.

Jennifer:
Right. A tiny little nation.

Steve:
A tiny little nation that's in such a dangerous location presently in the world. Has the most ancient, detailed history of any culture. This history given to us in the ancient biblical text. Beginning with Abraham, all the way back in Genesis, blossoming in the narrative of the Exodus account. And then the subsequent books after that, the Jews called the Torah. The laws of God that's given. And the time has come to begin to give them their history back. As we're thinking of Israel in the news. As we're seeing Israel attacked by this terrorist organization. And on our podcast, we want to bring out the fact that there's another robbery, another attack that's taken place on this nation. And that it is their history.

Jennifer:
We may feel like there's very little we can personally do besides pray, of course, which is very important for these conflicts going on. But when it comes to the loss of their history, there's quite a bit we can do. But let's first of all, maybe some of our listeners are kind of scrambling mentally thinking how have they been robbed of their history? What are you talking about with that? Well, it's an often overlooked attack. Probably most evangelicals today are not really well aware of this. But mainstream biblical archaeology over the past century has pretty much obliterated the ancient history of the Jewish people.

Steve:
Yeah, you see these bombs falling on the news. You see these buildings being blown up on both sides. And you can think of it that way, that over the last number of decades, some bombs have dropped in the history of Israel. Major bombs obliterated it.


Jennifer:
Yes, scholars, historians today will adamantly tell you for what they believe are very good reasons, that Jewish history is invented. It's contrived. It's dramatized. It was completely fabricated by a people group that were trying to make up a history for themselves. Why are they saying this? Well, like we already mentioned, biblical archaeology got going there in the mid 1900s. It began to really ramp up. Radiocarbon dating played a part there as well. And they began to falsify biblical event after biblical event, especially going back into the time of the Exodus, the time of the wilderness wanderings, and the time of the conquest. And of course, there's your foundation, I mean, of the Jewish nation. And they just kept coming up saying, well, this can't be true. You know, this must be mythology because we're not finding this and we're not finding this. And this was major stuff on the world scene. Maybe some of our listeners are familiar with the name Israel Finkelstein. He is probably the leading biblical archaeologist today. He's an Israeli and he wrote a book called The Bible Unearthed. And in there you have what we're talking about, the obliteration of this precious history.

Steve:
Right. And these are the Jews themselves. This is Israel themselves saying that they don't believe this history anymore. They don't accept it any longer. You mentioned Finkelstein. Here's another individual. I don't know his name, but we found a website, an article that this Jewish individual wrote called Exodus History or Mythic Tale. And he says this, "There was no organized mass immigration, but rather a constant flow of thousands of people from different Semitic tribes who left Egypt, roamed the desert, slowly infiltrating the land of Canaan where they eventually formed a single nation." So the whole historical account from the Exodus in the Bible, it's just throwing out the window. It didn't happen.

Jennifer:
Right. And they're just trying to make sense of how could these tales have come to be and what was the actual reality that was going on that gave us these biblical tall tales that we now know really didn't happen. And so there's all kinds of theories. Anything but actually historical. Here's an Israeli archaeologist, Zaev Herzog, stating, "Exodus is a history that never happened." Now a history that never happened is a sad, sad place to be.

Steve:
Yes, it is. Can you imagine someone telling your children that here in America, the history of the United States of America... well, it never happened. I mean, these guys like George Washington, you know, the Revolutionary War and the crossing of the Potomac and all of this. It's a fine tale.

Jennifer:
Right. Based on some little thing that happened. And it just blossomed into a legend.

Steve:
And really it was just some wandering people who came over... Well, we'd be horrified, wouldn't we? I mean, to hear people saying that kind of a thing. And what we're talking about here, I love America, and our history is rich of course. We're the greatest nation in the world. But the Jewish history, I mean, we're talking about the Exodus. We're talking about God leading these people through the wilderness, eventually to the Promised Land. And again, as we'll get into in a little bit, what all that leads into.

Jennifer:
It's foundational for so much in our world today. Here's another biblical scholar and theologian, Thomas Thompson, who says, "We can say now with considerable confidence that the Bible is not a history of anyone's past." So, I mean, bomb, a bomb falling on this nation.

Steve:
And this is not new. As you said earlier, most people, I don't know, most, but many Christians anyhow, don't even realize that this has gone on for decades. And it's not something that they're starting to put on the table and talk about. It's buried. This is a skeleton in the ground to even, you know, in mainstream thought and scholars. And you even bring up the Exodus or the Genesis or any of this, trying to say that it's true history, and you're just, you're laughed at. I mean, it's buried.

Jennifer:
It's been given a nice burial, you know, by some notable figures in our world today have tried to tell us that the Exodus account is very important, as one of our most ancient stories. And we need to learn things from it. But as it's being nicely buried, because nobody believes that it really happened. And they're saying it doesn't even matter if it really happened. We don't have time to keep quoting all the experts and scholars here. I will say recently someone in a conversation on social media kindly provided us with a nice long list of quotations from scholars today showing what they believe is the falsity of the Exodus account. I mean, that individual had no trouble going and gathering up all kinds of statements from the experts.

Steve:
There's plenty of material out there. And if anybody wants to do a Google search and go, you know, the information is at your fingertips today. Go read on Wikipedia. Don't believe us. Right. You can go see for yourself. So this consensus deals a harsh blow to Jewish history, to Israel's history, but also to their faith, their identity, which of course is inseparable from their history. Not only is their history, I mean, if their history is off the table, well, then their faith is off the table. They, you know, all this about God, God. The true and living God who brought their nation out. As a called out people as a special people group and he brought them out of slavery and provided for them so miraculously in the wilderness. Well, they're being told that all of that's not true. Great tale.

Jennifer:
Here's a rabbi, Rabbi Irving Greenberg expressing, you know, the Jewish identity, stating that the Exodus is arguably the most important event of all time. And he goes on to talk about how it shaped so much of the history that followed even throughout the world. He goes on to say, "That it was a Jewish event is an eloquent tribute to the extraordinary role the Jewish people, so minute a fragment of the human race, have played in human history." And listen, he says, he uses the word, he chooses to use the word "event". And that is standing in stark contrast to the mainstream consensus that these were not events at all.

Steve:
Actual events in history that actually took place. Right. So we now see sacred traditions such as the Jewish tradition of the Cedar, the Passover, so laden with meaning practiced for millennia, today viewed by scholars as being founded on small scale, just random happenings at best, pure mythology at worst.

Jennifer:
And of course, the Christian understands too, you know, the great meaning behind the Passover and these things.

Steve:
Well, that's where we're leading here. I mean, so we're focusing on the Jewish nation today. We're focusing on Israel. Right. But anybody who knows anything about anything with Christianity understands where this is going. I mean, so if we've lost the Jewish history, well, what else have we lost?

Jennifer:
Right. The Jewish history, the loss of it has negatively impacted Judaism, Christianity, and even Western civilization as a whole. The Judeo-Christian ethic.

Steve:
That's a term we use, right? Judeo-Christian ethic.

Jennifer:
Right. Fundamentally is based upon God's law, which was articulated to Moses there at Sinai. And now it seems to be standing on thin air. Here's a quote. John Van Cedar, scholar of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East says, "The quest for the historical Moses is a feudal exercise. He now belongs only to legend."

Steve:
Yeah. And if you don't have a Moses, you don't have a Sinai. And if you don't have a Sinai, you don't have a Ten Commandments, you don't have the law of God given to the nation of Israel. And if you don't have the law of God, you don't have the Ten Commandments, you don't have the Judeo-Christian moral ethic that Western civilization has been, as you said, founded upon.

Jennifer:
And it leads pretty quickly to the question, which I think is facing our culture today, does this Judeo-Christian ethic, which undergirds our very civilization, does it have any factual basis at all?

Steve:
Now, you know, again, this isn't something new. We have been dealing with this for quite a while. A term that's been used and was used decades ago and still used today in some circles is modernism. And it came out of all of this, these attacks on history and even on science. And, you know, being viewed as attacks. And pastors and theologians, and praise God for the courage of many men who wanted to stand up and fight for the truth and fight for the truth of the Word of God and for Israel's history, of course, because that affects all of it. And stood up against it. J. Gresham Machen, there you go, J. Gresham Machen kind of spearheaded some of this back then.

Jennifer:
You know, it's interesting that you bring that up because I was just talking to a friend and a listener of the podcast who told me she's doing a study in her church on liberalism in the church. And it was a book by Machen. And she said, you know, as we're going through this study, I keep thinking about your podcast because we're learning about how the Word of God came under such attack and scrutiny and began to be cast aside even by the church.

Steve:
Well, and here's where I'm going with that. What we've had for so many years has been theologians who have been coming to the rescue of Israel's history. Theologians and philosophy that has been coming to the rescue of Christianity and apologetics ministries. What we have been so severely lacking on, and this is where we say we are so intertwined with what's going on with Israel today, is we've been lacking in data. We have been lacking in the apologetics that says, come with me to the place. Come with me to the archaeology. And so, again, we have an Israel Finkelstein who has dug up the dirt, and we can go back to other names, Kathleen Kenyon and other people who have gotten into the ground, and they have brought all the data out.

Jennifer:
And they're reporting what they're finding first and foremost. So that's data.

Steve:
Yes, it is. And we have been, as the Jewish nation and as Christianity, we have been scrambling, because as the data continues to come out, we're scratching our heads and trying to figure this out. Well, the data that they're digging up out of the ground doesn't seem to be matching the biblical accounts. And long story short, the explosions have been happening and it's buried. They don't believe their own history. We are coming at this with data. We are saying, we do have answers. We can show you that the theology has been, and I'm not dissing the theology. We need that. Of course we do, but we've been talking that ad nauseam.

Jennifer:
Yeah. And the philosophy.

Steve:
Yes. And the philosophy. We need the data. And we are saying we have it.

Jennifer:
Right. So we presented the bad news. We've gone over the problem and the tragedy and the attack on the nation. So now we're ready to turn the corner to the good news. In the face of this horrible onslaught, the Biblical Chronologist here has in recent decades been publishing one Bible science discovery after another. Which proves that mainstream scholarship is in fact wrong. And the Bible's record of ancient Israel is simply true, which is extremely good news for this nation.

Steve:
Yes, it is good news. And you may be thinking, what are these discoveries that you're talking about? Well, it all starts back with what we call the missing millennium discovery. And I would encourage you to go back into our archives of our podcasts and listen to previous episodes where we talk about these things in more detail. Just briefly on this episode, the traditional biblical chronology has been off by a full 1000 years from the time of Samuel on back. We talked extensively, again on previous episodes, you will not find Israel's history at the incorrect traditional dates. The key to restoring Israel's history is one chronological correction. A thousand years. A thousand years, a missing millennium.

Jennifer:
It was dropped out of traditional biblical chronology. And that of course is going to make a mess of things, which indeed it has. I was talking to a new friend recently. Again, thankful for all the friends that God gives us. This particular lady is a historian and she does a great job talking about history, honestly, and encouraging others to do the same. And she has a really great grasp on many things that I'm learning so much from her, reading her posts. Well, I was recently visiting with her, set up a meeting with her and was talking with her about the work here. And I explained to her about the missing millennium discovery. And her first reaction was a furrowed brow and saying to me, "A thousand years is a long time."

Steve:
Right. That's everybody's reaction, when you first hear it, a thousand years.

Jennifer:
Her second reaction as she began to look over the material and process it a little bit, she said, "This is compelling. And I think this work has great promise." So she was able to grasp this missing millennium and all that it could mean as it begins to put the pieces back in place and re-harmonize these histories, the secular and the biblical.

Steve:
Right. She has a very good understanding of the importance of chronology. Yes, she does. It's very, very important. And that's why Dr. Aardsma calls his work here and why we call this The Biblical Chronologist. So let's talk about some of these examples.

Jennifer:
Yes. Let's just give a rundown of some of these major things in Israel's history that are restored by the work here and by this one chronological correction. We have five things. They're all big things.

Steve:
And we only have time today to just give a bullet point list, go back to the archives of our podcast, listen to these things in more detail. Get Dr. Aardsma's books on thebiblicalchronologist.org website. They're all there to purchase or download for free. But let's just talk through a few of these. Number one, let's talk about the Exodus again. Did the Exodus happen or did it not happen? Well, if you go to the traditional date of 14, around 1450 BC, you're not going to find the Exodus. You can dig in the dirt. You can claim the Bible's true all you want in the story of the Exodus, that this actually happened. But if you look for it at that date, you are not going to find it.

Jennifer:
You are going to find problem after problem after problem with the Exodus narrative in the Bible.

Steve:
But understanding the missing millennium, putting the right date at 2450 BC, the text says that Egypt was destroyed. There was a long-raining Pharaoh followed by a short-raining Pharaoh. The data at 2450 BC says Egypt is destroyed. The end of the Old Kingdom. There's a long-raining Pharaoh followed by a short-raining Pharaoh.

Jennifer:
And there's much more, but we don't have time to go into it.

Steve:
There's one example from the Exodus itself.

Jennifer:
There you go. The Exodus is restored to historical event. Number two would be Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai. This is where God's law was given. This is where the Israelites camped for a year the biblical text tells us. Moses went up the mountain. He made a Bama, a holy site where he made a covenant with God. Fearful events took place on the mountain. This is all what's given to us in the text. The mountain was smoking and loud noises. All of this is told to have happened in the real world.

Steve:
And when you get the date right, 2450 BC, you find a series of discoveries and paths that's led through the wilderness by the pottery. You find what we're calling Exodus pottery. You find a Bama, a high place or an altar where an altar was built. You find a mountain that doesn't have a top on it. It's really fascinating. Mount Sinai is right there. The data is right there when the date's right. So there's the Exodus. So there's Mount Sinai.

Jennifer:
Matching the biblical text with evidence left behind on the plane to this day, pottery that dates to the time period expected by this new chronology. So we have a real Mount Sinai that outshines any other candidate ever put forth for Mount Sinai.

Steve:
That's right. Now, number three, Dr. Aardsma has a whole series of articles now, newsletters in his online newsletter on the Exodus trail through the wilderness. Locations that have been discovered such as Rephidim, such as Marah. Some that we have gotten to in our podcast and some that we have not yet gotten to in our podcast. And it's fascinating how, you know, when you have the truth, we've talked about this, when you have the truth, it just keeps going. It keeps building and growing. And that's what's happening here. The biblical text, and again, we're not talking about today necessarily miracle. We're not talking about, that all leads to that. We're talking about data and this history found in what we call the Bible. This text says that Israel was camping all over the wilderness with millions of people. Okay, we need to be able to find that.

Jennifer:
Right. Yes, we do.

Steve:
If we can't find millions of people all over the wilderness, something's not right. And we can make all kinds of excuses up if we want, but it's either going to be there or it isn't. You can't have millions of people and millions and millions of their livestock all over the place that long and not find it.

Jennifer:
The unbelievers on social media will want to quickly bring up, "Oh, I guess they cleaned up everything after themselves and left not a trace." Because if you go to the traditional date and look for evidence in that time period, you will find nothing. But if you go to the corrected date, you will begin to find the trail of Israel through the wilderness. What the archaeologists call mysterious nomadic peoples.

Steve:
We don't know who these people were, but some kind of mysterious wandering people, must have just wandered around the wilderness in the central Negev. They left pottery behind.

Jennifer:
Campfires, they excavated remains of campfires. They described them as living in booths. They describe them as definitely being connected to the Canaanite peoples.

Steve:
And again, let me connect the dots here. The reason why they don't see these people as Israel is because it's a thousand years earlier than the traditional dates.

Jennifer:
Right. They know the biblical chronology, the traditional, and so it's not even entering into their paradigm at all. And every now and then, a bold archaeologist might suggest that somebody should reconsider the chronology, but usually they're putting their career on the line, and so they'll retract their statement or something. Anyway, yes. These places that we now have, I believe, over seven. Let's see, Succoth, Ethan, Pi-ha-hirath, Marah, Elam, Rephidim, Sinai, Kadish Barnea, and Mount Hor. Those locations, that whole list, each one has its own article written by Dr. Aardsma putting these puzzle pieces in place. And I mean, this is totally unprecedented.

Steve:
It is. And again, I don't know how many Christians realize that. I think if the average Christian were to sit in a sermon and the pastor talk about Elam, that they would think, well, the pastor could easily go to a map and show us where Elam's at. No. Or Rephidim, or Kadish Barnea, or Mount Hor. No. We have not had any clue where any of these places are in the real world.

Jennifer:
And some have had, some have been suggested here or there, possible candidates, whatever, but nobody has been able to make the actual route of the Exodus and map it out where it's all coherent like that. And I mean, we're talking about where Moses walked. You know, if I was a Jewish person, even as a Christian, that is thrilling to me. And what a tragedy that these sites haven't been known. They haven't been visited. It is time for this to change. We hope the Israeli people and Christians from all over the world will soon be able to go into that very wilderness, retrace those steps and see the biblical account come to life, and know that the evidence was right there in front of those archaeologists at the proper date for the wilderness wanderings, and it is as real as the sand underneath your feet.

Steve:
And let me stress too, we're talking about one change, one, one change in a date that makes, not sense of one event, but of event after event after event after event. It harmonizes. Israel's history is right there when you make the one change in the date.

Jennifer:
The one correction in that number in 1st Kings 6-1.

Steve:
The last two episodes of our podcast we have dealt with manna. And that's number four on our list. The text that we have in the Bible talks about a white flaky substance recorded in Exodus, and in Numbers, appearing on the ground every morning, sustaining millions of lives through the wilderness. That's in Israel's history. That's in the text. We have the data. Dr. Aardsma's theory now brings to us a substance that can be produced in the laboratory, held in our hands, touched, tasted, and it matches all the properties. This data matches all the properties described in the biblical text. And this is so cool because again, today we're focusing on Israel, and we're focusing on Israel's history, and we are focusing on the data-rich apologetic that we have. So as much as I love theology, and everybody here around Aardsma Research and Publishing knows I love theology, and I've been in ministry all my life, I'm in the family of ministers, but we are not talking theology today. We are not talking philosophy. Or tradition. We are talking archaeology, chronology, and even in manna, chemistry, real-world chemistry, to show us the truth of this historical event in the Bible. And for Israel to see that their history is real and it is true. It's God's. It's God's archaeology. It's God's history as long as we're being honest. It's God's chronology and it's God's chemistry. We wouldn't have chemistry if God didn't create it. So it all belongs to him. It's God's theology and it's God's philosophy. But we desperately need this data-rich apologetic.

Jennifer:
Even this small manna, but very weighty piece of Israeli history, can no longer be assigned to the realm of mythology. We spent two podcasts talking about that. A fabricated story would never be able to be demonstrated in the real world the way that manna can, now can, with this revolutionary discovery Bread from Heaven, the Manna Mystery Solved. The only way to get manna is if you have a scenario exactly like what the Bible describes. And even this discovery comes to us from the missing millennium discovery simply because the archaeology from these proper dates shows us how the encampments were arranged. Shows that the shepherds were on the outskirts of the main encampments. And that is key in understanding the production of the manna. So there is a part that the missing millennium plays even in this discovery, which is again huge for the nation of Israel to know that this is simply historical for the founding of their nation.

Steve:
Historical fact. And this is a good place to mention too, Jen, that if people want to get the book and they want to get a sampling of manna, if they want to see what it was like, they can go to thebiblicalchronologist.org and they can get a packet, book and manna. And now we're offering manna by itself if you'd like to just get a packet of manna and order that, and hold this data in your hands. Hold this evidence right there to show Israel's history. A little piece of Israel's history. You know, we'll go over to Israel and we'll get all kinds of little trinkets or whatever.

Jennifer:
Water from the Jordan River or something.

Steve:
But we're showing how chemistry in today in a laboratory in a kitchen can create manna that they experience for 40 years in the wilderness. Number five, and this will be our last one, let's mention the conquest. Now, we have not gotten into the conquest in our podcast yet. This is really kind of the first to be touching on this.

Jennifer:
In 2024, next year, we've got to hit that.

Steve:
Yes, because we're going to talk about Jericho. We're going to talk about the Battle of Ai. And the text tells us that cities were destroyed as a result of Israel taking possession of Canaan, the Promised Land.

Jennifer:
And it tells us how they were destroyed, the manner of the destruction and some very important landmarks that were put in place. There's a lot of data there in the text.

Steve:
And when you, well, if you go to the traditional date, you are not going to find it around 1400 BC. It isn't there. And again, therefore Israel doesn't believe that it's true.

Jennifer:
The archaeology, unfortunately, some decades ago, they excavated Jericho and they said, well, at the date of 1400 BC, there was no city operating at Jericho at all in the centuries surrounding that time period. Well, it's hard to have Joshua conquering Jericho and the walls falling down if nobody was even living there at that time, those types of discoveries kept piling up.

Steve:
However, if you get the date right, you understand the correction, put the thousand years back in, go to 2400 BC, and again, what are the odds? You make that one correction and everything just keeps adding up. Well, here you go. Jericho and Ai are both destroyed at the date of approximately 2400 BC in the manner that the Bible describes. The data matches the text.

Jennifer:
This is Israel taking the promised land and Joshua's military conquest. And all of this is so consequential and weighty in Israel getting established as a nation and what their history is built upon. And so that's the last of the five pieces we wanted to hit today. There's much more. But you can see there a pretty good overview of what we mean when we say it is time to give Israel their history back. They need that. We all need to know where we came from and what our roots are. And as this history is restored, the ripple effect is going to be great, even going through our entire civilization with what we are founded upon.

Steve:
And again, I love that we are talking archaeology, chronology, chemistry, dating methods, all of these things, these disciplines and sciences given to us by God as a means of determining the truth, coming to reality, coming to the truth. And yes, I agree with you. We so much want to see the Jewish nation understand and see the real history behind their nation.

Jennifer:
You can see that once your mind starts to wrap around this and you think, okay, so it's not myth. It's not legend. It's actually historical fact. Where does that lead you? And everybody has to draw their own conclusions. We want the Jewish people to look at this and draw their conclusions and many others as well. Where does this real history... today we're on the real history, strongly, part of the podcast... where does that lead? But we can offer our conclusions. Our podcast, right? So we can give our own personal conclusions of where does this lead.

Steve:
Well, you're right. And right alongside the data is God. The God whom the ancient Israelites worshipped is not silent. He's not mythological. The God that lived in Moses time is just the same today. And I do believe this is part of the problem with all of these major attacks on Israel's history. There are darker forces at work here. Now we're going to get into theology and we're going to get into... But that's where this leads. That's where it goes. The data leads to the theology that, yes, if all of these things are true, well, then that means I'm going to have to start rethinking this thing about a God. I may have to start rethinking this that maybe there is a law that God has established that we're supposed to be abiding by. That there was a covenant made by God with this nation. And where does that lead? Well, we keep going through this biblical text and we find a new covenant that comes along, and a Messiah that's promised all through that old covenant that was going to come. And then we find him coming and we go into the New Testament. And of course, this is where we come into Christianity, and why Christianity is so affected by Israel's history, of course.

Jennifer:
Right. The history of Israel is really the story of God's plan to redeem the world and to bring the Redeemer into the world. And so it's no wonder that the powers of darkness have so strongly wanted to obliterate this history from anything connected to reality. But at the very least, the starting place is that the modern nation of Israel may legitimately take strength and courage in the knowledge that God indeed worked miracles to bring their nation into existence over four and a half thousand years ago.

Steve:
And our prayer is that not only do they come to that realization, but they also come to the realization of who their true Messiah is. His name is Jesus. He's King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the Messiah.

Jennifer:
And what a joyous day it'll be when his own nation and people embrace him for who he is.

Steve:
Amen to that. Well, that wraps up our featured topic for this episode, but it does take us into our Quote of Note. And our Quote of Note this month is by Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill said this. "Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is."

Jennifer:
There it is. Right.

Steve:
It doesn't care a bit about your feelings. It doesn't care about your panic. It doesn't even care about your ignorance. Or malice. There it is.

Jennifer:
Incontrovertible means it's not open to question. It's undeniable, which ties right in with what you were talking about there, Steve, with the facts, archaeology, chronology, dating methods, chemistry. These are facts. You can try to deny it, but you cannot legitimately deny the truth or change the truth. You can react to it. And of course, when undiscovered truth first comes on the scene, new truth, there are a lot of reactions. Various ways that people can try to handle it or process it or fight it even. But in the end, it's the truth, and there it is.

Steve:
And you know, it is true. We have to be able to handle it. And God is good. God knows what we can handle and what we can't. And he's, I've often said, he's gentle with us. And he's very patient. Patient. He reveals truth slowly, I think, and he understands, I believe God understands that we are but dust. And it takes a long time to wrap your brain around certain things. You know, I mean, we could go back in history.

Jennifer:
And once you're exposed to a new idea, a truth that you haven't before considered, it's like a seed, you know, it's planted. It's not going to go away. And God will gently bring it back to your mind and allow it to begin to take root as we are honest before him.

Steve:
Well, it's truth in time. That's kind of a play on words there.

Jennifer:
Hey, there you go. That worked really well.

Steve:
I haven't thought about that, that angle on our truth in time ministry, but that's one way you can look at it. God gives us truth in time. And that takes us into our next section. Our ministry that we have that's what we call our speaking arm of the ministry here is called Truth in Time. And part of that ministry is music. Some of you know us and some of you don't, but my wife and I met through music. We were in college. Both of us were music majors at that time in college. And that's how we met. I was a singer and she was a piano player and we needed to, we needed each other back then for that. And we've needed each other ever since. But we have found that the classic hymns of the faith dovetail beautifully with our message of the Bible in real world history. These timeless hymns and these gospel songs, they're rich with Old Testament imagery.

Jennifer:
Yes. And last month we shared about two of our daughters recording a song and it was put on YouTube. And it has reached almost a half a million views.

Steve:
Yeah, we're about 500,000 today. Yes. And the comments keep coming in from all over the world. Again, back to our theme of friends all over the world. We have had comments from Chile, from the UK, El Salvador, Brazil, comments in Korean, Russian, German, Portuguese. And it's amazing, I can copy the comment, plug it into Google Translate and I can see what the person was trying to say. And you know, and of course many comments just right here from the US. But people saying, "Awesome to hear and see this generation singing the old hymns of the faith. Excellent job girls. Hearing this great old hymn so beautifully sung certainly made my day." And I'll read one more here, "Beautiful voices, such a blessing to hear them singing an old hymn, all caps, AMEN." So we know that these hymns that were written from such the rich Israeli history, really, is what they're written from, which spreads into Christianity, these hymns are just a treasure and we don't want them to be lost. And so as part of the Truth in Time ministry, we want to sing these hymns and bring them back to our minds.

Steve:
Much of our modern music today doesn't go there. Not all of it, some does, but much of it today, as beautiful as it can be and as worshipful, we don't necessarily tread back into those Old Testament stories like some of these old hymns did. And you're right, it's very important that we keep doing this and we keep understanding that rich heritage and history that is there. And we wanted to try something new on our podcast today.

Jennifer:
And as I said, at the beginning, we had something extra special today.

Steve:
We thought we'd try this and see how it works. And I don't know, Dr. Aardsma said, what were his words? This would be rather novel, I think he said. We decided we want to try to do something a little novel around here.

Jennifer:
Be a little out of the ordinary for once.

Steve:
And maybe it's not as novel as we think, but we thought we'd put some music on the podcast. And a song that's been very special to us over the years that I've sung growing up, and you have to. A Shelter in the Time of Storm. And what a fitting song. We've talked about Israel today. We've talked about what's going on in the news.

Jennifer:
Four and a half thousand years ago, Israel was weary in the land of the wilderness. Boy, were they weary. And yet Paul tells us in the New Testament, Jesus was the rock that followed them through the wilderness. Was their shade, their defense, their refuge. Jesus is a rock in a weary land. And even today, as we've discussed some of the things happening in our own time with the nation of Israel, he's a refuge in a time of storm.

Steve:
And here's Olivia and Annalise with you and I, the four of us singing, mainly the two of them. And we give a little backdrop here and there. But we hope you enjoy this old hymn, "A Shelter in the Time of Storm."

(SONG)

Steve:
All right, we hope you enjoyed that. I've had that song stuck in my head for weeks now. We've been practicing that.

Jennifer:
I love those new words we learned as well. On the third chorus there we brought in some alternate words that just give that imagery of Israel and the wilderness.

Steve:
Yes, and you can go to our show notes if you haven't already seen it and you've heard the song on the podcast, if you'd like to see the video of our ugly faces. Well, not your ugly face. My ugly face and you three.

Jennifer:
The girls are cute as they can be.

Steve:
Three roses and a thorn are there singing. That's on our show notes. You can look at that if you would like to. Well, let's go into aging 101.

Jennifer:
Right, our section on the anti-aging vitamins is just very brief today. We do have the third edition of Aging: Cause and Cure is now available as a free PDF download. We will be getting into that meat of that material in podcasts to come. It is the third edition and I think it can be easy to think, oh, that's old news. Oh, yes, I read that. Oh, I don't know what I think about all that, but I've moved on. But you know what? This train is just cranking up out of the station is the truth. And because it has such implications for human life, Dr. Aardsma has been very transparent with this aging research from the very beginning. So the third edition has much more to offer us and we will be looking at that in the theory of aging, which of course is coming from the biblical book of Genesis.

Steve:
Right. And I wanted to make just a quick point again to connect the dots. The same discovery we've talked about through this podcast and in our section on Israel, the same missing millennium is what led to the discovery of the vitamins.

Jennifer:
Because understanding Noah's flood in the real world was key to the discovery of these two previously unknown missing vitamins. The vitamins themselves have been available for quite some time now. And even as the theory is refined and how they are working in the body is becoming more understood through the ongoing research, the vitamins themselves are still available for purchase. And many people are availing themselves of them, these vitamin drops. And so I wanted to address one of our most frequently asked questions about the vitamin drops. And that's just simply, how long does one bottle of these vitamin drops last? And of course, these are not your traditional vitamins. These are the two newly discovered anti-aging vitamins. For an adult male, one bottle, if he uses that bottle just for himself, would last 56 days. For an adult female, 75 days, so two and a half months for one bottle. And I often get positive reactions on that, like, well, that's not bad, you know, for lasting that long. And then very often we have husband and wife couples that are on a subscription to get the vitamins. Basically one bottle a month, every 32 days, you'll be running out of those drops and needing to get another bottle.

Steve:
All right, very good. Well, let's go into Helen's view now. And this month, Helen takes us back over 50 years and relays an article that Dr. Aardsma wrote back when he was a young teenager, 15 or 16 years old, an article called "This I Believe".

Helen:
It was the first store-bought suit that Gerald had ever owned. The family was poor and it was a sacrifice for them to make this purchase, but his mother insisted that he should have it. What was the occasion? Gerald entered an oratorical competition put on by the Optimus Club and he needed some decent clothes. He was 16 years old, the year was 1972, and a 10th grade student, sophomore, in a public high school at the time. This was 51 years ago. He won first place and would go on to the next level of competition representing his high school. Gerald's mom sent his speech to a youth Sunday school paper called "Challenge" put out by the Regular Baptist Press, and they printed it. Gerald was paid $18.75 for the use of his article. Was this just the beginning of a lucrative writing career? Hmm, writing? Yes. Lucrative? No. Here is his speech titled "This I Believe".

"Have you ever felt afraid? I mean really afraid? Have you ever experienced the worst fear of all, the fear of the unknown? I know for a fact that many of today's youth are experiencing this fear. Why? Simply because the very props of their beliefs have been knocked out from under them. What props can withstand the battering rams of such philosophies as 'Truth is relative'? For if truth is relative then there is really no truth. Or the philosophy which claims emphatically, 'You can't be sure of anything'. For we are reluctant to believe that of which we are uncertain. So we are left with a big circle from which there is seemingly no exit. A circle which consists of the necessity to believe something. And yet the circle is empty because there is nothing in which we can believe. A circle whose only byproduct is nameless fear. If however we can find a constant, then we will have a genuine truth. And if we place this truth within the circle produced by the philosophies of men, we will have filled its void. Let us try to fill the emptiness with religion. Religions give man something in which he can believe at least temporarily. But can you be sure of what these religions teach when they are mutually antagonistic? Do not changes take place within these religions? Have there not been many significant changes in recent years? No, religion cannot fill the void. Let us fill the void with science. Science has laws which have been used for the universal betterment of mankind. And if science can't explain it, it will propound a theory. Ah, but there is the problem. Can you believe in theories which are definitely not a constant or a so-called truth of science which have been proved false? No, science cannot fill the void. Let us attempt then to fill the void with faith in ourselves and faith in our fellow man. Man has performed all sorts of marvelous feats. He has explored from amazing depths in the ocean to fantastic outreaches of space. Yet can you believe in men like Mussolini or Hitler or Napoleon or Alexander the Great? And what about yourself? Are you a constant? Do you never change? No, man cannot fill the void. We could continue seeking hour after hour in our quest for truth. Yet we would not find truth until we had looked in exactly the right place because you see, truth has but one reliable source. Why is it then that seemingly so few men have discovered this source? I think the problem has been that man has so concentrated his attention on the small unstable stones in the foreground, such as religions or science, that he has not yet seen the huge stable mountain which lies in the background. That mountain is the Word of God. But again we must raise the question, is the Bible a constant? Let us see. The Bible was written over a period of 1,600 years by more than 36 writers. Yet they all agree with one another. Again and again, archaeology has proved the Bible to be historically correct. Devotees of science have tried in vain to prove the Bible scientifically false. But the Bible has been with man in its completed form for nearly 2,000 years and it continues to be, year after year, one of the world's best sellers. The Bible is true, a constant upon which we can rely. Using the Bible as a core, we can place it within our empty circle and change the figure to a tangible sphere whose very matter is composed of unchanging knowledge, that which you can be sure of, that which you can believe. Yes, the Bible waits with open covers to satisfy the void in your life. Read its contents and believe what it has to say. Countless numbers have read and believed the Bible. It has not failed them. It will not fail you."

Jennifer:
Well, thanks so much for being with us today and we certainly enjoy sharing these truths with you. We hope they are faith strengthening and empowering to you wherever you find yourself in life. And next month, our featured topic is going to be the age of the earth. This is a hot topic in circles today. It comes up very quickly. And as you can probably anticipate, we will have maybe some new thoughts for you on this topic, and it will be real science and it will be real Bible. And we want to introduce to you some ideas about how to properly think about the age of the earth, and how to proceed where we find ourselves in Christianity today with this question.

Steve:
Yes, in between now and then, may you and your loved ones have a blessed and wonderful Thanksgiving. Enjoy that family and those friends around you. We've had a little theme today going of friends. Praise God for good friends and all the blessings that God gives to us. Hey, have a great month. We will see you in December.