What primarily is the Ark of the Covenant, choose the best answer?

OP how come you left out a critical option? It is a highly mobile pizza warmer. Keeps the panic pizza hot and fresh.

POLL: What primarily is the Ark of the Covenant, choose the best answer?

11. Is was exactly what the Old Testament says it was 24.0% (23)

8. A container where God maintained his earthly connection or residence 15.6% (15)

6. A nuclear reactor or cold fusion device of ancient technology 12.5% (12)



7. A physical symbol of power and God's presence 11.5% (11)

1. A portable power source of some type 9.4% (9)

5. A capacitor to store electric power 8.3% (8)

9. It never existed, just a religious legend 6.2% (6)

2. A transmitter and receiver for remote communication 3.1% (3)

4. A box to hold religious icons and relics 3.1% (3)

10. An ancient story passed down to the Hebrews from a previous culture and adopted by them 3.1% (3)

12. A combination of several ancient stories that coalesced into one recognizable form 2.1% (2)

3. A weapon of some unknown origin and design 1.0% (1)
Blank (View Results) (24)

Non-Blank Votes: 96

The Ark killed Friends and Foes alike . . .



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1 Samuel 5-6 New International Version (NIV)

The Ark in Ashdod and Ekron

5 After the Philistines had captured the ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. 2 Then they carried the ark into Dagon’s temple and set it beside Dagon. 3 When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! They took Dagon and put him back in his place. 4 But the following morning when they rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained. 5 That is why to this day neither the priests of Dagon nor any others who enter Dagon’s temple at Ashdod step on the threshold.

6 The Lord’s hand was heavy on the people of Ashdod and its vicinity; he brought devastation on them and afflicted them with tumors.[a] 7 When the people of Ashdod saw what was happening, they said, “The ark of the god of Israel must not stay here with us, because his hand is heavy on us and on Dagon our god.” 8 So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and asked them, “What shall we do with the ark of the god of Israel?”

They answered, “Have the ark of the god of Israel moved to Gath.” So they moved the ark of the God of Israel.

9 But after they had moved it, the Lord’s hand was against that city, throwing it into a great panic. He afflicted the people of the city, both young and old, with an outbreak of tumors. 10 So they sent the ark of God to Ekron.

As the ark of God was entering Ekron, the people of Ekron cried out, “They have brought the ark of the god of Israel around to us to kill us and our people.” 11 So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and said, “Send the ark of the god of Israel away; let it go back to its own place, or it[c] will kill us and our people.” For death had filled the city with panic; God’s hand was very heavy on it. 12 Those who did not die were afflicted with tumors, and the outcry of the city went up to heaven.

The Ark Returned to Israel

6 When the ark of the Lord had been in Philistine territory seven months, 2 the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us how we should send it back to its place.”

3 They answered, “If you return the ark of the god of Israel, do not send it back to him without a gift; by all means send a guilt offering to him. Then you will be healed, and you will know why his hand has not been lifted from you.”

4 The Philistines asked, “What guilt offering should we send to him?”

They replied, “Five gold tumors and five gold rats, according to the number of the Philistine rulers, because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. 5 Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and give glory to Israel’s god. Perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land. 6 Why do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh did? When Israel’s god dealt harshly with them, did they not send the Israelites out so they could go on their way?

7 “Now then, get a new cart ready, with two cows that have calved and have never been yoked. Hitch the cows to the cart, but take their calves away and pen them up. 8 Take the ark of the Lord and put it on the cart, and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way, 9 but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory, toward Beth Shemesh, then the Lord has brought this great disaster on us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us but that it happened to us by chance.”

10 So they did this. They took two such cows and hitched them to the cart and penned up their calves. 11 They placed the ark of the Lord on the cart and along with it the chest containing the gold rats and the models of the tumors. 12 Then the cows went straight up toward Beth Shemesh, keeping on the road and lowing all the way; they did not turn to the right or to the left. The rulers of the Philistines followed them as far as the border of Beth Shemesh.

13 Now the people of Beth Shemesh were harvesting their wheat in the valley, and when they looked up and saw the ark, they rejoiced at the sight. 14 The cart came to the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh, and there it stopped beside a large rock. The people chopped up the wood of the cart and sacrificed the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. 15 The Levites took down the ark of the Lord, together with the chest containing the gold objects, and placed them on the large rock. On that day the people of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and made sacrifices to the Lord. 16 The five rulers of the Philistines saw all this and then returned that same day to Ekron.

17 These are the gold tumors the Philistines sent as a guilt offering to the Lord—one each for Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath and Ekron. 18 And the number of the gold rats was according to the number of Philistine towns belonging to the five rulers—the fortified towns with their country villages. The large rock on which the Levites set the ark of the Lord is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh.

19 But God struck down some of the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy[d] of them to death because they looked into the ark of the Lord. The people mourned because of the heavy blow the Lord had dealt them. 20 And the people of Beth Shemesh asked, “Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God? To whom will the ark go up from here?”

21 Then they sent messengers to the people of Kiriath Jearim, saying, “The Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord. Come down and take it up to your town.”

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Thanks! I will watch when I get a chance . . .

According to remote viewing the Ark was located by the Knights Templar while they were in Jerusalem digging in the Temple mount . . . If you believe in Remote Viewing and the group who did the viewing?

2, 3 and 11

For the faithful I am sure you are correct . . .

Catholics and Orthodox alike traditionally hold that the Ark of the Covenant prefigures the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Theotokos (which means "God-bearer" in Greek); and similarly accept that the purpose of the juxtaposition between the vision of the Ark at the end of Rev 11 with the appearance of the Woman Adorned with the Sun at the start of Rev 12 is to intentionally draw a comparison between these archetypes. The Ark of the Covenant, which housed the presence of God in the form of the Divine Shekhinah Glory, directly prefigures the Woman who would bear the Eternal Logos within her own body. Indeed the Virgin Mary has been equated with the Ark of the New Covenant since the earliest days of Christianity. Writing in the third century, for example, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (c.213-c.270), makes this analogy fully explicit:

“The ark is verily the holy Virgin, gilded within and without, who received the treasure of universal sanctification. Arise, O Lord, from the Father’s bosom, to raise up again the ruined race of our first parent”
St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (Orat. in Deip. Annunciat. Int. Opp. S. Greg. Thaumaturg)

The fact that the exposition of the Ark of the Covenant at the end of the cycle concerning the Two Witnesses is immediately followed by the "Great Sign" seen in heaven at the opening of Rev 12 - a vision of the Theotokos, suggests that these two elements are inextricably linked. At the same time, the vision of the Ark of the Covenant in the Apocalypse also appears to be closely related to the widespread belief in ancient Judaism that the Ark would be discovered towards the end of the world, before the final coming of the Messiah.

We can find an example of this expectation in the recently discovered Hebrew pseudepigraphical text Treatise of the Vessels (the dating of which is uncertain, see here for more info), which claims that a portion of the treasures of King Solomon's Temple, including the Ark of the Covenant, were hidden by a number of Levites and prophets before the sack of the Temple by the Babylonian forces of King Nebuchadnezzar. The Treatise of the Vessels states that the Ark was hidden away in an unspecified location, and would "not be revealed until the day of the coming of the Messiah son of David" (See Davila, J. Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures Vol 1, Eerdmans, 2013).

Most importantly for Catholics however, is the fact that the rediscovery of the Lost Ark towards the end time is prophesied in the deuterocanonical Second Book of Maccabees - which was infallibly defined by the Catholic Church as a divinely inspired work during the Council of Trent in the 16th century, and is thus considered to be part of Divine Revelation:

"These same records also tell us that Jeremiah, acting under divine guidance, commanded the Tent of the Lord's Presence and the Covenant Box to follow him to the mountain where Moses had looked down on the land which God had promised our people. When Jeremiah got to the mountain, he found a huge cave and there he hid the Tent of the Lord's Presence, the Covenant Box, and the altar of incense. Then he sealed up the entrance.

Some of Jeremiah's friends tried to follow him and mark the way, but they could not find the cave. When Jeremiah learned what they had done, he reprimanded them, saying:

No one must know about this place until God gathers his people together again and shows them mercy. At that time he will reveal where these things are hidden, and the dazzling light of his presence will be seen in the cloud, as it was in the time of Moses and on the occasion when Solomon prayed that the Temple might be dedicated in holy splendor.

We are also told how the wise King Solomon offered a sacrifice of dedication at the completion of the Temple, and that when he prayed, fire came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifices, just as it had done earlier when Moses prayed." 2 Macc 2:4-12

Something that isn't supposed to be touched, ever.

The top had two cherubim with their wings outstretched over the Mercy Seat. When it was in the Tabernacle the Glory of God was there above the seat.
It was the throne of God when He was among us.

It wasn't a capacitor or a rocketship engine.
None of that is Biblical, and the only references and knowledge there is of the Ark is from the books.

Can a capacitor that size bring down mountains, discriminately kill one that touched it but not the others standing nearby? An intelligent capacitor?
Moses and Aaron seemed to be able to touch, handle, build and put things into and out of it without ill effect.
It was a powerful symbol of God on Earth, not some modernistic gizmo.

Go back to looking for sasquatch, it's more your speed.