Blurry Creatures - EP: 324 The Real Mt. Sinai with Joel Richardson

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

In this eye-opening episode of Blurry Creatures, author and researcher Joel Richardson joins us to uncover the true location of Mount Sinai. With compelling evidence and unshakable passion, Joel challenges the traditional narrative and takes us deep into ancient geography, biblical accounts, and archeological findings that point to a shocking possibility. Could the real Mount Sinai be hiding in Saudi Arabia? Tune in for a journey that could rewrite history. - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Luke so often, people email us and they have this story. They're out in their woods and they're looking in the bushes. and they go, what's that? And when you are pouring your dog food and your dog's bowl, that's the last thing you want to say. What is that? What is the stuff coming out of this bag? You know, I don't think a lot of us think about maybe what we feed our dogs. And that's why we partner with rough greens.

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Go to Rough Greens.com and use discount code blurry. That's RUFFF Greens.com discount code blurry. Rough Greens makes any dog food better. What the Lord did at the beginning is he demonstrates his strength and his part, he rips the ocean in half. drowns Pharaoh. He's doing all the, you know, at the front end of trying to woo the woman, you're strutting. Later, you're saying, and I can provide for you too. You know, he does all the quail and manna and water and he's like, I'm not just a, he's wooing Israel away from the false

gods. If we're Christians, and this is the reality, biblically speaking, our entire faith system, all of our hope, everything hinges on the fact that we believe that someday God is going to come back from heaven in blazing fire, he's going to rip the sky open with an army of angels in the form of an anthropomorphic Jewish man to engage in a hostile takeover of the earth and save us. Pretty crazy stuff to believe. But so also is the fact that he ripped the ocean in half. And so that's what he's saying is he goes, remember this so that you'll have faith for this stuff. The prophets are pointing both back and forward. And so again, I just say, again, another, oh, look at that coincidence. What a coincidence. What a coincidence. What a coincidence.

coincidence that the mountain that the Jews in the first century during the time of Jesus and Paul believed was the real Mount Sinai, that it also just happens to have an altar, just like the Bible describes at the base. It just so happens to have the pillars, just like the Bible describes. Just, you know, and it matches the biblical criteria. It is going to be the single greatest, again, transition in the field of biblical archaeology in the history of biblical archaeology. Like it's that big. It is the golden chalice. And it's all just sitting out there in the desert, just sitting there. The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine.

The Smithsonian that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right, because if one person's right to bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop is just pregnant. with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Hermann event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal.

All right. All right. Sweet baby Moses. We're back in Bulari Creatures basement. You made that saying. Yeah, whatever. I think that's a saying. That used to be a saying.

But we're talking mountains today. And we've talked to mountains a lot on the podcast. I think we talked to Dr. Michael Heiser about it. And the Bible Project about cosmic mountain. We have Joel Richardson, author Joel Richardson, in the basement today, talking about Mount Sinai. I'm excited about this. There's some controversy about it. And your friend Pastor Brian Hunter, welcome as well.

You guys are, you guys come together as a pair, apparently. Yeah, yeah. We balance each other out somehow, some way. I run my weird theories through the pastor to make sure. Okay, good. Yeah. You've got intangible accountability. I like that.

Yeah, Joel, great to have you. We were talking pre-roll, which I love is that our mutual acquaintance, Man Cow calls you the Antichrist guy. So we won't do that this show because we're going to go to Mount Sinai. And where do you? Yeah, there's so much glorious about that. We have to, we forgot with Bob Larson. But yeah, we've got to start show proper.

What are your thoughts on Bigfoot? Yes. Joel. You make some killer videos on social media. Yeah, you do. And I know you got some thoughts in there about the big guy. What are my thoughts about Bigfoot? Yeah.

I'm kind of agnostic. Okay. So if by Bigfoot, what you mean is do I believe in fun, magical, furry, a wild world, then absolutely. Okay. Do I believe that there is some type of giant hominid still surviving in the remote parts of the world? The longer that we don't have great videos and pictures now that everybody has phones. phones with cameras, the more that I'm starting to doubt that. Yeah.

But could it be something else? I love the way you guys frame it that the world is a bit more blurry than what they came in? Exactly. There are plenty of videos, Joel. They're just not in focus. They all look at them from 1990. Yeah. On your, yeah, on your razor phone.

So I've got a little bit of a different take on Bigfoot. So you know when you, you know, you drive a car all the time at home, but then when you travel someplace else, you usually rent a. car that's not quite like the car that you drive at home or if you go to a third world country and you're like you know in something really decrepit and it just doesn't quite work like what you're used to back home i think that if you take that piece of the puzzle plus another piece of the puzzle from uh dr michael heiser's fiction work facade yeah are you familiar with that at all okay so in that book without giving away too many spoilers

Um, he, the plot unfolds where the, the bad guys are able to synthetically through genetic manipulation and some magic okis postcas kind of like create these like gray aliens. And when they're done with them, they just kind of like dissolve, right? If you remember any of that from the book. So here's my idea on Bigfoot. I think that Bigfoot. is just like a rental vehicle for this realm. I don't know that you're ever going to find like Bigfoot bones, like legitimate. I don't know that we're ever going to capture or shoot one. But I think that he's just a like a rental vehicle for this realm for, I don't know who to run around in, do his thing.

And then when they're done with Bigfoot, the Bigfoot suit dissolves. And back he goes. This is the inspector gadget theory of Bigfoot. I like it. Bigfoot a stick shift. This message will spontaneously. You guys are Southern boys. So here's my question in return.

Let's go. This is a real question. Give it. You're out hunting. Yeah. You're out hunting for elk. Yep. You've got a pretty good high-powered rifle.

You have a clear juvenile bigfoot in your sights. You take the kill shot or not. Yeah. Because you're going to prove it once. for all and settle. Yeah, and then we can quit the show. We'll retire, man. We'll go on tour.

I'll take the big guy with us. I had to make sure it's a juvenile. Still, yeah. Just kill it. Dude, yeah. We've had a few people talk about that. I mean, we don't need Bigfoot to continue to be a mystery for the show to go on. I just think.

You could stuff him. Then we could live here. Yeah. Or we could just, maybe I'd just wing it. Hey, we can raise him. We interviewed a guy from Minnesota who said there was one stuffed. in a museum as a kid that some guy had. It was a juvenile.

Same thing. Found it. It was like in a river. They found it in a river. And they had it on display for a couple years. And then it's mysteriously vanished. They always. Most hunters don't pull the trigger though.

That is the thing. It's too human to shoot it. What if it looks you in the eyes? Now is it, it reads your mind. That's the weird part. Yeah. I have a question.

In your scenario, is this juvenile bigfoot, is it menacing, is it threatening, or is it maybe like, flower collecting? Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. You're going to take the shot. Well, let's zoom out because we zoomed really far in.

Let's zoom out and talk about Mount Sinai, the weirdness there. There's obviously on this show, you can get as weird as possible as you want about sort of things that you found there or evidence to suggest that it's a very blurry spot. You know, obviously mountains are strange places in the Bible. we've talked about this a lot of like what's the significance why mountains why doesn't the why doesn't god give us the information in the plains you know in the valleys it's always on top of a mountain there's some significance pyramids are like you know artificial mountains and we've talked about all of it here plus i mean this particular topic is is is a debate as well as what's

interesting about this what kind of makes it blurry is that there's there's a controversy in where the actual location of mount sinai is because there's multiple countries are places that claim to be the Mount Sinai. And Joel, you're particularly, you're like Liam Neeson, you have a particular set of skills when it comes to Mount Sinai. So ready to hear what we got here.

Let's dive in. No, you're right. So there's a handful of candidates that scholars look at in terms of what is the real Mount Sinai. So we're talking about this mountain called Jebel Alos, which means the mountain of almonds

in Saudi Arabia, northwest Saudi Arabia. Yep. So I've got a bunch of pictures and things. So this picture right here, you're looking at it, the darkened peak, that's the peak, that's Jebel-Lose, the sort of lighter ridge that's down below, that's actually a secondary lower peak. So you're going to be about an hour just to get over this granite peak, and then you've got kind of this huge bowl up there, and then that would be the peak of Jebel-Los. Now, the other main one, of course, is in the Sinai

Peninsula in Egypt, and then also you have Harcarkum is a pretty popular candidate that's in Israel in the Negev I am absolutely convinced to me the evidence is overwhelming that this is the real mountain when you talk about the concept of you know cosmic mountains biblically speaking to use some of dr. Heiser's language the two greatest cosmic mountains in the Bible is Sinai and Zion far and away they dominate the narrative there's other you know pretty important even pagan if you will cosmic mountains but really Sinai and Zion And I'm not a huge woo-woo guy. I'm a pretty just down-to-earth type of guy,

but I will say when you're there, and I'm always cautious to talk like this, but you can feel, I'll just say the echoes. And it's interesting when you read about Mount Sinai in the Bible, even before the great theophani, when God comes down and meets Moses and the Israelites, the Midianites called it the Mountain of God. So it was actually called the Mountain of God before all of the great events of the Bible.

So there's something about the mountain that almost expands beyond the biblical narrative that we probably will never really know. Yeah, and I think we could say that pay attention to the legends. You know, the legends, like sort of this history that's passed down, oral history is a big part of what we talk about, how people will say the natives experience some of these things here in America with like there was a race. of mound builders before the natives got here. And it's not really written down in traditional history.

It's an oral history. So sometimes it feels like when you get that phone bill, it's like the crash site document. You can't read it. There's a bunch of numbers, random fees, vague language, stuff's blacked out. You're like, what am I actually paying for? I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. I like to be simple. I like to be easy.

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Hilton, for the stay. Why do you think they call it the mountain of God? Why do you think, what do you think happened to for them to continue to call it that. Well, so this is actually a great point is what's interesting, okay, so in terms of the case for this being the Real Mount Sinai versus some of the others,

is with the traditional site, okay, so it's there, we've got a map in the pizza-shaped peninsula. So you had in the fourth century, fourth, fifth century, you had the monastic movement started with Anthony, the Desert Fathers. They leave Alexandria to go out in the desert to pray

because modern society is just getting too crazy. And they only knew. Yeah. That was before. Anyway, so they just determined that this is the tallest mountain. They just go, this is the real Mount Sinai. Then you have these Saracen start killing the monks. So eventually one of the emperors comes down, builds a fortress, which is St. Catherine's monastery.

And then from that point forward, the Roman Empire is basically, this is the real Mount Sinai. And the other one gets forgotten. And it kind of fades out into, you know, Among Christians and Jews, you don't really hear much talk about this after the fourth century. But what's interesting is when you go there. And so Saudi was closed up until 2019. No tourists were allowed. You could only get in if you're working.

So it was very closed off, right? So you had all these critics that sort of mocked Jebel-O's as the real Mount Sinai. It was kind of looked down upon. But the reality is when you go there, all of the locals call it the Mountain of God. They say, you go into this town there called Albida, and they call it the caves of Jethro. You go there, they're like, this is Jethro's house. This is the well of Moses. There's a well right in the center of town.

It's on the major ancient Arab caravan route. It's an oasis town. It's a very natural place where people would have lived, and it's very close to this other mountain, which all of the locals, you know, all of these critics, they're like, oh, these crazy evangelicals, this little growing group of evangelicals, saying this is the real Mount Sinai. That's ridiculous. They're just listening to YouTube videos.

And then you go there and the Bedouins are just like, yeah, I grew up here. This is the mountain of Moses. We've always known it. My grandfather told me and this type of thing. So there's a very vibrant tradition. And the Muslims are the ones that have preserved it, which is what's so interesting.

Why do you think there's like an actual controversy? Like, is it because there's some sort of benefit to having the, I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out like why. Why does it matter? There are certain things I know in our space that are hotly debated, but it seems like there's a reason one way or the other. But a mountain is an interesting debate. So there's a real fascinating history behind this.

And some of it is in the 80s you had this really colorful character named Ron Wyatt. American Adventure, you know, he snuck into the kingdom with his two sons. Now, here's what's interesting. What was he going on? He was going on a bunch of these books written in the late 18th. 1800s, these French, British Dutch explorers, Sir Alois Musil and Richard Burton, and they're exploring the land of Midian. And he's reading that.

And then he looks at Josephus and Philo, so two first century Jewish witnesses that say Mount Sinai is the tallest mountain in the land of Midian. And academic consensus places Midian in Saudi Arabia. So he's reading that and just going, I don't think the traditional site is real. he sneaks in and my answer is and this might be a little cynical I would say you've got all these guys that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their archaeology PhDs and some anesthesiologists from the United States with no archaeological degree just sneaks in and finds what is it's not arguably look mount sinai in the exodus it is the golden chalice of biblical archaeology you know in the in the whole field of biblical archaeology though you know which is dominating by secular scholars. They'll say, we really only have clear evidence that the Bible is true back until the time of David.

You know, we've got wax seals and different things like that. Recently, several years ago, they found this little lead, this little piece of lead that has Yahweh's name and the curses that were up in Shechem. And so they say, this could push things. Now, they're still debating this, right? Scholars debate things for years before they kind of settle on it. this could push things back to the time of Joshua. They go, wow.

But all of them across the boards, all biblical archaeologists, they'll say, we have zero evidence for the Exodus. And the Exodus is the foundation for the entire Bible. And they go, we can't find it. Well, the reason is because they've been looking in the wrong places. It's really that simple. But some nurse anesthesiologist or what, I'm not sure exactly what his job is, sneaks in and finds the grand, you know, the golden chalice. and he's just some guy.

And of course there's ego. You know, academic world is filled with ego. Sometimes it's actually funny to read them, argue amongst each other. We'll see that in Egypt right now. Like with the, you know, the most latest report about this, about what's underneath Kauffre's pyramid, right? And, you know, whether or not that's true,

the old guard, if you will, Hawass and those guys, they hold the line because there's, it's just like science. And we watched this play out in the last five years. Like, wherever the money is, that's where you hold the line. Yeah, there's big money in Mount Sinai. Is that what you're saying? It's big money.

I would say there's big money in traditionally held views of Mount Sinai being on the Sinai Peninsula. You know, they built churches. People for hundreds of years would make pilgrimages there. It was the established commercial destination for Mount Sinai. and with that investment, they're looking for a return on their investment for hundreds of years.

So of course they would want to hold on to that for as long, fight tooth and nail to hold on to that site as the accurate original site. Yeah. To me it's also like the whole argument about where the temple actually is in Jerusalem, which is a whole other thing, right?

You've got folks to talk about how it's, I forget the right term is, but it has to do with the idea of a warping of our beliefs based upon historical stuff. So like you're saying, if Romans built a monastery at this place and history has always said that, then when you're up against this whole historical narrative

now for millennia almost, you know, of, or yeah, for millennia that says this is the spot. And so you're back into tradition. Like it's the whole idea of, you know, there's a very, very interesting book about the location of the temple that I've read that just talks about what they, why tradition would say

that's perhaps the Western Wall is part of the old Roman fort and not necessarily the temple because this is the side but no I'm just saying but you know Jesus said every stone would be unturned so why is there a wall left?

There's all these interesting ideas about we have this we have we up against tradition and history that has been force fed or or even like in the sense of a Roman fort or a monastery that they've planted this there and said this is it right.

Yeah you can build a whole narrative and you can build tourism around it. I have a degree in tourism, so I know about this. You threw frisbee's in college. It's actually caused some political tension between Egypt and Saudi because of the tourism issue. The thing of it is, in fairness, the traditional site, St. Catharines,

it's still, even though it's not the real Mount Sinai, it's filled with some of the most incredible Christian history. I mean, it's where Codex Sinaiticus was preserved and the iconography, and there's so much there. So it's an important, And it's still a beautiful place to go, but it's just not the real deal. So there's macro and micro history,

like our clues that this is the place. I mean, obviously we can talk about, the locals talk about it. What are some, like, things you found, little things that go, this is, this is like a little smoking gun here and there. Well, and the preface is too, Joel, you've, this is not just theory,

you go, you've been there. I only even covered that, yeah. Like, you actually go take tours there. This is something that you did. So you've spent a lot of time at DeBelle-Alouaz. Yeah. And so you're on the ground guy when it comes to this. Yeah, I was blessed. So, you know, the background. So first, interestingly, the book you're talking about, Temple, is by Bob Cornuke. Yeah. And he also came after Ron Wyatt. And Bob was

going in the late 80s. And then you had this other couple, the Jim and Penny Caldwell that got all these pictures throughout the 90s. And then I'm just some guy that, you know, there was many others that have gone. I showed up in 2018. was my first trip and that was before it was open to tourism and back then it was still really like you know like a week before i got there one of the locals was shooting at someone and you know it was real blurry in terms of whether it was even legal um but i got in with a legal visa and so forth um but your question my question was i was just imagine you dressed as borat sneaking into sneaking into saudi but mountain is nice in terms so here's the thing okay so when i came the very first time

Well, actually, there's a guy, there's one of the better ones that's there. One of the better ones that's there that I love, and he speaks great English, but he's kind of like the Arab Warat. He sounds like, and I was like, man, your English is fantastic. Where'd you learn? He goes, I like the American movies. And I said, oh, really, what's your favorite movie? And he said, my favorite is Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I was like, whoa.

But the horror movies are very popular in the Middle East. How funny. Yeah. I like Lenderface. My question was like there's micro evidence. that of all these things, people dig up stuff here in America and they find, you know, Egyptian artifacts here in America and it just kind of throws a wrench in the whole narrative, right? But what have you found there in that site that kind of isn't just this big oral

tradition? It's like, I found this thing here that stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. So I lost my train of thought. So, okay, so here's the thing. The first time I got there. So there's tons. There is tons of, I mean, there's everything from just the topography of the mountain, the shape of the mountain, and the location of the mountain, and then you get into all of the little locations around it. There's an altar, right? Like, we can look at a lot of this stuff. But here's the thing, the first time I got there,

I just show up. I just show, with my phone, I'm not an archaeologist. Yeah. 2018, I'm walking up to the mountain. And actually, we had kind of, because we snuck in, because we weren't sure if it was legal, we kind of missed where we were supposed to be.

We kind of came in on the wrong valley. So we got up early in the morning. We go, there's Mount Sinai. Let's start hiking. I had like a 50-pound pack, and it was like 90 degrees. by six in the morning. We hike this mountain and then all of a sudden we go, uh-oh, that's Mount Sinai.

So we had to then go down through this valley. So as we're going through the valley on the northern side, there was a handful of a six of us. We kind of get separated. We're about 50 yards apart. And I walk up to this, I see, it's kind of like a cave and I see a painting. And I'm like, oh, cool. This looks like, you know, some of those cave paintings you see in France or something. And it was a whole bunch of archers.

And, you know, it was a dozen or so archers. Like a petroglyph? Not a petroglyph. So technically a petroglyph is going to be chiseled into the rock. Okay. By beating through kind of this darkened veneer. So yeah, so jump back to that. Oh, look at that.

So there's one of the pictures, a handful of them I threw in there. A couple pictures. Just in the valley between these mountains. Yeah, but now it's on the, it's right at the base of the mountain. literally on the northern side right at the base of the mountain and it's kind of it's not a cave it's just like a rock outcropping but it's on the underside of the rock because the paintings won't survive if they are exposed to the weather the petroglyphs will so there's yeah a handful of them shooting so i'm just you know suddenly i got my iPhone and i'm an archaeologist i just start taking

pictures and amazingly we had great cell service because it was out in the middle of nowhere and i text my wife and i go hey look what i just found she goes that's exactly like in Exodus 19 and I was like what are you talking about I'm the Bible teacher here and so I I amplified it with this um rock climbing app it it changes the color so you can really see it with some of those but anyway so at the end of Exodus 19 it says so the theophany is about to happen God's about to come down on the mountain the Lord says tell the people to consecrate themselves and he says but tell them don't approach the base of the mountain. Don't touch it. He says, if you do, you'll be killed. You'll either be stone to death or

shot through with arrows. And I was like, huh, look you here. What a coincidence. And this is the thing is it's coincidence after coincidence after coincidence. But there was a young kid that was with us, a 13 year old, and he runs over, and this is about 20 yards from the painting of the archers. And this is, to me, I thought this would be one of the coolest things for your audience. I actually think this is a very legitimate pictographic ancient evidence of giants so look at that and so yeah you can kind of see it here again it's it's faded it looks like they're wearing jinko jeans but you know they're they're massive or more something parachute pants perhaps yeah they're all wearing parachute pants they're a tribe of breakdancing giants no but you see these little so those audio listeners

you see these little guys with arrows and then there's these big massive characters that are obviously five or six times as big as the other ones. Transport your senses with Sol de Janeiro's limited edition perfume mist collection. At Sephora, spritz on lush notes of rainforest orchid and crisp sea breeze with Hefresco Paraiso. Embrace of floral and fruity scent inspired by Rio's nude beach with chiqui bikini or caps for sun-kissed bliss with limonada gelada, where zesty Brazilian lemonade accord meets coconut milk and golden brown sugar. Don't miss Sol de Janeiro's limited edition. perfume mist collection only at

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some arrows so it does seem to be portraying a battle and it does seem to be portraying a big cluster of little people and a big cluster of very very large people yeah i can't remember you have any of guys ever been to like deserts southwest, you know, canyon lands area and seen some of the pictographs there. When I was, I grew up in Boulder, Colorado and would spend a lot of time farting around Moab and exploring canyons with my buddies and like looking for Anazazi ruins. And we would come across so many walls of pictographs. And interestingly enough, separated by who knows how long and unimaginable distance. What I'm seeing in this photo of these really broad,

shouldered, small-headed, you know, you can tell that they're people, but they're highly stylized, does not look too similar to many pictographic walls in the Canyon lands. What is that connection in relation? Yeah, while we talk about the mound builders were here, and the natives fought them just in the same way. This sort of man versus giant and narrative is all,

all over the place and they went to secure a remote locations. At the end, it seemed like they retreated to islands and other places and there's all this weird history there. We've talked about that endlessly on our show. Yeah, whether it be like Sardinia or Easter Island, they'll have lore of giants. And then of course in the southwest, do we have, like it does look a lot like stuff from the Anastasi.

It looks like the stuff that I've seen in Colorado. There's lots of creatures in that. But yeah, there's a theory that would be that like the conquest of the Holy Land, there's a diaspora as they were being hunted by the Israel. Israelites, you know, basically they, you know, Caleb and Joshua come back and say, we can take them and they go into the Holy Land and they, you know, it's the, it's the genocide problem for a lot of progressive Christians, right? You have this goddess sanctioning judgment on these people groups, all the Ites, you know, the Ziza, Zizaites and the, you know, and the wall city of Jericho, there's giants. And so, yeah, we have, we've got Native American lore about giants here and, and all, I mean, all over the world, there's a lore of giants. What is the giant history connected to Mount Sinai? I don't really know, like, off the time. top of my head. Yeah, and so this is one again, thanks to Dr. Heiser, who actually had worked through this in some pretty intricate detail, is Israel clearly is part of the Exodus story, the Exodus account,

when they were at Refedim, which is actually where the split rock is in that general vicinity, they fought the Amalekites. So there was this massive battle between the Israelites and the Amalekites, and you go, okay, but what does that have to do with giants? Well, the Amalekites were among the giant clans so if you do the do the homework and you know work through it it's the amalekites were essentially a mix between some of the children of esau from the mount hoar which is kind of right there in petra and some other clan some of the otherites i don't remember at all but you know they were among the giant clans so you go okay you know again biblically speaking it's not something that most people learn in Sunday school, but Israel did fight an army of giants.

And they were told to completely wipe them out. Of course, they didn't. And then here at the location of the mountain that was believed to be the real Mount Sinai in the first century, again, Josephus and Philo, two different Jewish witnesses are saying, this is the real Mount Sinai. You go there and you go, and there seems to be, and it doesn't not seem to be a stretch, a real picture of a battle between giants and people. and they would paint these, by the way, it's always on the underside, but they're oftentimes, the petroglyphs and these, I notice, they're always at, I'll say, like an intersection where there's a road that people would have been traveling, and they're looking for a rock that serves as almost like a billboard.

Yeah. And even like the archers, I go, this is essentially an ancient version of this property protected by Smith & Wesson. Yeah. I mean, it's like cross this and you're going to get shot. Yeah. So you think this is like, this is a, at the time this was created or this was created later? You think this is that old? That's a good question.

Was it a record after the fact? But I mean, here's what's crazy. And again, I don't mean to be sensational, but it's not unreasonable to say it's possible that Moses himself actually painted these. Like it's actually not unreasonable. 40 years in the desert, that's a lot of time to paint, you know. Yeah. develop some skills. Yeah, you could.

Yeah. And as a lifelong, I was a decorative painter for, 20 years. I'm fascinated by traditional materials. I'm like, I wonder what they use for a binder. You know, it's going to be earth pigments, but they use something that caused that to stay for 3,000 plus years. The blood of giants probably. Yeah. Yeah. Or yeah, I prefer the blood of little people. Oh, that actually, hey, Nate, you're going to hurt Nate's feelings. Hey, we talk a lot about the little people on our show. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I am convinced that the government did breed some docks and into my stalk some at some point.

They'll better control you. So let's continue with the story. You're hiking in. You go past this ancient billboard and you're like, look at that. You notice there's some interesting scenes of fighting with arrows. And then you see these giant people. And then there's this history there. Your wife catches you and knows more than you do, which is typical.

And then you keep going to the mountain. And then what happens? So let's talk about the mountain itself. I showed you a picture of it. I've got a few things here. Okay, there's a great picture. Go back. Okay, so this is really, you're looking at the mountain.

Now, this is a bit deceptive, but this granite lighter colored section of the mountain that you have the arrow on. The arrow is pointing to a cave. So if this is the real Mount Sinai, we would expect to have a cave because we know Elijah went there. He was in a cave. And right on the face of the mountain, there is this cave. Now, when you go up over that ridge right there where you've kind of almost got these at the top,

almost looks like little tablets or something, you go up over that, you're in a bowl. And so, yeah, go to one of these next mountains. So that's the bowl. I call it the plateau. Now, when scholars read the biblical text, apart from looking at any pictures, they go, Mount Sinai appears to be a two-tiered mountain. Because you have the story where as the covenant, as God makes covenant with Israel, mountain at the end to seal the deal because it was a betrothal covenant God was betrothing himself

essentially a marriage covenant which is a precursor by the way to the marriage supper of the lamb at the end of the age the betrothal starts at sinai it culminates at mount zion that's the biblical that's the way it's framed from a prophetic literary perspective but at the end of the covenant he says moses Aaron nadab and abenabayu the 70 representative elders of Israel come up to the mountain but then Moses goes all the way up. But when they go up to the mountain, it says they looked up, and it's one of the most sublime, surreal passages in the Bible. And it says, they looked up and they saw the feet of God.

And then it's almost like they can't, it's almost like the Bible can't even accurately describe it. And it was something like a pavement of cobalt or sapphire blue, as bright blue as the sky. And then it says, they ate and drank. And they saw God. And then it says, but God did not raise his hand. In other words, he didn't kill them.

They saw his feet and he didn't kill them. But then it says, Moses, you go all the way up. So again, scholars just by reading the text, and then you get there, you go over the first ridge, and there's this massive plateau. It's the size of a football field up there. And then you're looking up at the secondary peak that Moses would have ascended all the way up to. And I go, okay, so just the very topography of the mountain itself is, it's exactly. what the Bible describes. And so what scholars say is they say it's like the holy place and the Holy of Holies. Only Moses could go into the Holy of Holies. So the mountain itself is a prototype

of the temple itself. And what's interesting is it faces perfectly east, just like the temple does. So whether it was this or the tent of meeting that they built the tabernacle in the desert or the temple later, they all face perfectly east. So from the tip of that mountain, through, here down to there's an altar at the base so look at pictures of that that moses built that face is perfectly east yeah so there it is a little closer oh go back to the night one so we camped um in 2019 up there on the plateau my buddy took this picture you can see the milky way i hate to use the word magical but it was one of the absolute most magical experiences of my life just and and it was actually during sucote which is when the israelites camp outside you're supposed to be able to

look up and see the stars and it was just by accident you know so anyway just had to share that one so yeah the the bible describes and those audio listeners it's like there's like this a field at the top of the second or the first break and then they could have had a meal there hang out have a meal and then you can see from this like area there's another peak and he would have he would have walked on to that part and only he can go there that's interesting that is this is this topography different than what we see in at the traditional Mount Sinai spot? Is that mountain as well, a double or a double-peaked mountain?

They kind of say that it is, but it's kind of like, you kind of have to shoe for, yeah, this is better. So I took an archaeologist, this guy named Elie Shukron, so he's one of Israel's like most legendary leading biblical archaeologists. Really has an amazing repertoire of things that he's discovered under his belt. And the first time I just said, I'm not going to try to convince him. I know how academics are. You know, just let him see it for himself.

And then he was pretty quiet. The second time he came back and someone, one of our guests said, you know, Ellie, do you think this is definitely the real Mount Sinai? And he was like, I think Joel is completely convinced. He said, but I think it is definitely the best candidate of any of the candidates. And I went win. Because to me, I view my role in all of this as I'm taking the baton. from Ron Wyatt and the original explorers and Jim and Penny called well.

And I'm not an academic, but I'm trying to hand the baton to the scholars because I have every bit of confidence that in time, because honestly, once that there's going to be a a frenzy of archaeologists going because they all want to kind of leave their mark and this type of thing. I'm actually bringing a few more in October. And once this becomes widely accepted, which it will, it is going to be the single greatest, again, transition in the field of biblical archaeology in the history of biblical archaeology. Like, it's that big. It is the golden chalice. And it's all just sitting out there in the desert, just sitting there. Like, you go to Israel, like, you guys are about to go. It's amazing. Okay. But they'll be like, you know, park your bus here

and look down and 30 feet down. That's where Jesus probably could have walked. This is where a miracle happened. It's like, but this is just, it's like virgin, untouched. And because again, it was forgotten. A time capsule. You're like, you can get to walk there and it's not, there's not, yeah, there, there aren't green trash cans and like a little trail stay on the trail with ropes. You're like at the, at the place walking the same way that the Israelites would have, which is, there's no trail. And they're discovering a lot of this stuff now, like, you know, they're using LiDAR radar and they're finding, oh, there's this pyramid in this country. We never knew that existed. And this is like a new, like, a lot of this stuff is coming back to, uh, for people who rediscovering things or

discovering them for the first time. So what else, uh, when you're on this trek up, are you seeing little things? I mean, obviously, we talk a lot about megalithic history, things that were like pre-flood and stuff like that. Is there any other signs besides these cave drawings? Like, are you, are you, always there's an altar? Yeah. And what else are you? Yeah. Cave of, Cethro, take us there, Joe. Yeah, yeah. I actually skip kind of past the Caves of Jethro. And there, the Caves of Jethro are basically like what you would see at Petra. But let's see. Is this like a day hike or a couple of days?

It's a solid day. Okay, go down to the bottom one. There's a lighter picture. Boom. Okay, there's the altar. So Exodus 24, Moses got up early the next morning and he built an altar at the foot of the mountain and he set up 12 stone pillars, which are representative of the 12 tribes of Israel. And then they do all the burnt offerings and so forth.

So it also says in Deuteronomy that it had to be made with uncut stones. So these are not cut. They're just natural stones stacked. So go back to the picture. So right at the base of the mountain is this, it's kind of like a slaughter corral, if you will. And it's kind of shaped like a hockey stick. So the bowls would go in one end and they can't see what's about to happen, you know, because Moses is up the other end, you know, cutting heads off and the cows get upset.

So it's not until they turn the corner that they realize, Clara Bell, God has a wonderful plan for your life. But then at the end is the altar. And so I think it was in 2004, the Saudi, see, back then they didn't want all these crazy Americans and explore sneaking in. So they were trying to say, no, this has nothing to do with it. Now they're kind of going, oh, it clearly is. And they believe it is, by the way, the Saudis do. Let's see.

Right there is an overhead picture of the altar. So that's looking down. Now, at the base there, at the end, where the altar is, they did an archaeological survey in 2004. And so on one hand, they were trying to disprove that it's Mount Sinai, but I think go to the next slide. I may have quoted it. Yep.

So when they excavated it, they found a layer of ash, charcoal, and bones, found mixed with other organic materials, which is exactly what you would expect to find if it's an altar. An altar, yeah. And now this one skeptic said, It was a kitchen. And I go, it's not a living quarters. It's, first of all, it's only this high.

There's no doors windows. You know, it's not a bunch of people where we're living there. Now go to the next slide below, and there just so happens to be 12 pillars right next to it. Wow. Look at that. Round ones. Yeah. Now, the word there, for what it's worth, the word in the Hebrew is Matsiba, which is most often a standing stone.

So it's not always, you know, a carved column. Sure. But in a few instances in the Bible, it can be. So it's usually not, but it can be. And so again, I just say, again, another, oh, look at that coincidence. What a coincidence. What a coincidence that the mountain that the Jews in the first century during the time of Jesus and Paul believed was the real Mount Sinai, that it also just happens to have an altar,

just like the Bible describes at the base. It just so happens to have the pillars, just like the Bible describes. And it matches the biblical criteria. So when he slaughters the bulls, then he would sprinkle the blood on the pillars which represent the vast number of people because he's not walking out there like a Catholic priest just sprinkling everyone with blood

that would be a good 1980s reference to what movie Chainsaw Massacre No, at the prom Harry. They dumped the blood on it. Blashing blood reference. Another horror reference.

Yeah. But look, can we go backwards real quick though, Joel? And I just like, you're finding these evidence here. But like from a, if we pull out like of a macro view, does this make more sense for the course of the Exodus than them going

to the traditional Mount Sinai? Because I know that that part for me is interesting because you have the Exodus story, they leave Egypt, they cross the Red Sea, and then they're in the desert until this event at Sinai. But does it make more sense from like a geographical standpoint for them to end up here as opposed to end up in Sinai? I'm just kind of going back to the beginning

because we're looking at the evidence you found, but like for a big view, does it make more sense? for them to be here than to be in in the Sinai Peninsula yeah so I don't have the quote here from Josephus but okay so there's a huge debate and this is actually the the the lynch pin of the debate is where did they cross because when you look at the Sinai Peninsula you've got these two fingers you've got the suez on the western side the Gulf of Akaba on the eastern on our right side and the Bible describes the sea being split it's the yam suf it's the and there's this massive debate what is the what does this word mean yamsuf is it the red sea or the reed sea etc the more naturalist

traditional scholars want to say it happened on the suez canal through this shallow marsh but the wind blew so much it the water built up and it dry it's it was a natural event the bible describes something much more like cecil be de mills you know something ridiculous it's intended the whole purpose of the lord ripping the ocean in half is to demonstrate that he is the supreme absolute superior god over all of the majestic gods of egypt right so josephus specifically describes the location of the sea crossing in detail he says the is the um egyptians were up on this very high precipice it says oh so high you could almost not see to the top and the israelites were pinned down on the beach on the suez side there's no mountains on the akaba side it's exactly what he

describes in fact there's something called wadi watir this incredible wadi that works its way out to this beach at Nuwaba beach and it's exactly what Joseph. So either Josephus, now again, you're talking, let's say, depending on when you believe the Exodus was 1,1,1,200 years later. Either we believe that by the first century, the Jews had completely had lost where it was, which is highly unlikely, or Josephus was right. And so it really comes down to whether or not you believe the splitting of the sea was, a miracle of that level. And let me just say this too from a biblical perspective. The Lord intended to write the story of the Exodus,

which culminates at the mountain with the great theophony. God comes down on the mountain. Like, there's amazing stuff in the New Testament. Jesus does miracles. But there's not like God comes down in fire on the mountain and a million plus people are begging Moses. Like, please tell him to stop talk. Like, we can't bear it.

You know, with a blasting of the shofars and, thick smoke and storm clouds and an earthquake and the mountain shaking, all of this imagery is then deliberately appropriated by Jesus, by Paul, Peter, and John in the New Testament to refer to the return of Jesus. So, biblically speaking, the the theophanie, the return of Jesus from heaven is the far more glorious, far more grandiose, majestic, terrifying, culminatory event in the entire story of redemption and it's patterned after the theophony of Sinai. So it's an important sort of part of the whole story.

It's intended to be like, and the prophets are constantly saying, remember, remember. The entire story of the Passover is do this so that you will remember. Teach these things to your children when you're walking here doing that. Remind them. Remember, remember the things that God did back then, like the crazy stuff. Remember the insane stuff. Remember when he ripped the ocean in her? half. Yeah. And the reason he wants us to remember and believe those things is because he wants

us, quite frankly, to have confidence. Because if we're Christians, and this is the reality, biblically speaking, our entire faith system, all of our hope, everything hinges on the fact that we believe that someday God is going to come back from heaven in blazing fire, he's going to rip the sky open with an army of angels, in the form of an anthropomorphic, Jewish man to engage in a hostile takeover over the earth and save us. This is a Bose moment. It's 10 blocks from the train to your apartment door. 10 basic, boring city blocks until the beat drops in Bose clarity.

Streetlights become spotlights as you strut down the sidewalk, your own personal runway. With Bose, you get every note, every baseline, every detail, just as you should. Those 10 blocks, they could be the best part of your day. Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at Bose.com. Pretty crazy stuff to believe. Yeah.

But so isn't, I mean, so also is the fact that he ripped the ocean in half. Right. And so that's what he's saying is he goes, remember this so that you'll have faith for this stuff. The prophets are pointing both back and forward. Jesus at the last supper says, do this in remembrance of me. Yeah. It's the same. It echoes, right?

It's to remember the things I did. It's absolutely connected. He knows he's going to the cross. So in the, in the Old Testament, if I can't for just a moment, in the Old Testament, when God is speaking of the feasts, we in the Christian church have for such a long time thought of those as like, oh, that's what Jews do. They celebrate, we're coming up on Passover this weekend at the time of this taping.

But we've always thought of them as, like, that's what Jews do as part of their religion. The Bible is really clear, these are my feasts. And at our church, we talk about God's family traditions. You know, like every family has got weird, you know, fun or quirky traditions that they subject their children to. As a part of building identity and culture, God is no different. He has family traditions that he invites the world into. Come be a part of my family. gain identity through the participation of my feasts.

And he says that these feasts are part of them is to be a holy convocation. And that word convocation is a word that we don't use at all today. Convocation is a really churchy word. But the meaning of that word is sacred assembly, a special side set of time, but also rehearsal. The definition and concept of rehearsal is embedding. in the Holy Convocation. So what's a rehearsal? A rehearsal is a practice for something to come. And when Peter is speaking on the day of Pentecost, and he quotes Joel, and he says, this that you're seeing on the day of Pentecost is that, which the Prophet Joel spoke of,

this is that. I believe that the Lord is trying to bring planet Earth into a family tradition, not only to remember what he has done, but to prepare our hearts for what he will do. Again, in Matthew chapter 24, Jesus answers the question. What is it going to be like when what's the sign of the return of the son of man? He says the sign is going to be the return of the son of man. When Jesus comes back, and I think it will especially grab the attention of the nation of Israel, because the way and manner in which Jesus returns, Jews will be like,

this that I'm seeing in Jesus of Nazareth, is that what we saw on Mount Sinai? And they'll connect the dots. I love that. Practice. We're talking about practice. And I love that your, Joel, your understanding of the Old Testament is so dynamic

in this age where Christians don't know what to do with the Old Testament. you know, a lot of mega church pastors are like, yeah, let's just put the Old Testament back there. They didn't really get it and you're trying to breathe life into the note. Like, this is some of the best stuff in the Bible. And let's talk about that. And I wanted to ask you a question about in the New Testament, you see Moses show up on a mountain again and the Transfiguration. What's the connection in your guys' mind between Moses showing up there?

So this is, I kind of threw this out to you, and I'm going to also kind of filter this, through the pastor to make sure we're not in heresy, but this is we're crossing into the realm of genuine speculative theology. So I know you guys enjoy that. We like to speculate a little job. Sometimes you can take a theory and throw it into the theological world, into the world of theologians, and they're just going to go nuts.

And this is one of those things. But I actually think it passes the test. So you're going to chum the waters, if you will. Yeah, to let the Theobro sharks come and. Theo bros. Unite. Okay, first of all, oh, man.

Theologians have long recognized the connections between the Mount of Transfiguration and that event, those events with the Exodus and the great theophony at Sinai. Obviously, you have Moses and Elijah are there. These are the two characters. Obviously, they're talking to God at Mount Sinai. The motif of his face shining like the sun. Again, this is all imagery that begins at Sinai.

You have descriptions later, like by Moses, Deuteronomy 33, that describe God coming from heaven, but he is in anthropomorphic form. He has hands. He's marching. He has feet. Lightning shooting out of his hands or fire, depending on which translation. And he's shining like the sun. He's always, it's like he's dawning. He's shining.

So Isaiah 60 uses the language. But it's not coming from the east. The sun rises in the east. It's coming from the south. He's coming from Sinai. And so some theologians say it's just kind of, it's kind of sensational language, poetic language about the Exodus. God didn't literally march before the people.

It's just kind of saying that. I fully believe that it's drawing from Exodus language, but it's actually speaking of the return of Jesus. that all of these passages that describe Yahweh in anthropomorphic form coming back, and it literally says with his angels, these are the passages that the New Testament draw from as they develop this doctrine or theology of Jesus' return and etc. So him shining like the sun, his face is radiating and so forth.

That's all Exodus language, also the timing in terms of the holidays and so forth. But it uses the language. Now here's a thing. Theologians or scholars don't really know where the real Mount of Transfiguration is. Some say it's Mount Tabor in the Northern Galilee. Some even say it's Mount Hormone. They're not really short, but when it says Jesus took them up on a very great mountain, high mountain, it's the same phrase as when Satan takes Jesus up onto the pinnacle of the temple and so forth,

So it's using the same language of possible translation. Okay, so this is where... Should we use the P-word, guys? Portal? Oh, good in a minute. There's a lot of P-words. I don't know where we're going to do that one. Portals everywhere.

We thought you were going to say Pringles. That's really 80s. There's some in here, actually. They're probably not any good anymore. Yeah, see you right here. We got the 80s version. Straight from the 80s. I have to do a squirrel.

my wife's grandfather is the engineer that designed and made the Pringles stacking machine like he's the one that made Pringles. What a legacy. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. We are very good at distracting our guests

from what they were talking about. But back to the portal. Yeah, back to the portal. Put that away, name. Okay. So the question is, did Jesus take them? Did Jesus, did they translate? Was there a portal to were they on Mount Sinai?

Mm. So again, the Bible, we acknowledge that the Bible teaches that there is such thing as translation. Hey, I like this idea. I mean, you've got that. Yeah, because what was, who translates? My brain is, uh, Ethiopian eunuch and Philip. Yeah, Philip. Yes.

Yeah. And how does this work? So now, you know, because we're dealing with a biblical worldview, which is like, how does it work? They come down, they peer, they eat, they beat people up. They're physical and then they walk through wall and disappear, whatever. You know, like are they faster than the speed of light? Like, we don't understand the physics of it, but there is physics. Yeah.

That's kind of a whole other issue. In any case, okay, so could they have been on Mount Sinai? And then later in the sheriff's first or second Peter, he says, you know, we saw the majestic visage on the holy mountain. So he uses that phrase, the holy mountain. And as we talked about earlier, there are not many. mountains in the Bible that are called the Holy Mountain, the premier ones would be Sinai or Zion. So you can say, well, was it then called the Holy Mountain after the fact because of the

Transfiguration event or was it previously they were on the Holy Mountain? And I think there's actually some legitimate evidence. Now, here's the crazy part. Here's the warm hole. I like the crazy. Here's a way. Yeah. Okay.

So, and I think I have the verse in here. This passage blows my mind because I try to envision it. Yeah. Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside of the camp. So this was the tent of meeting, a good distance from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points.

Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak. and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. Everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting,

which was outside the camp, and it came about whenever Moses went out, that the people would arise and stand at the entrance of their own tents. Because it was so intense, they would just stand there, and the pillar would descend. The pillar of cloud, or fire at night, descends from heaven, and it would come down at the entrance of the tent.

And the Lord would speak with Moses. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud stand in there, they would worship. Thus, the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face. Now, this is the phrase, just as a man talks to his friends, one of his buddies, just like we're chit-chatting right now. Moses would talk to God face to face and sometimes, you know, he would wear a veil. So who is Jesus talking to on the Mount of Transfiguration? Moses. Talking to Moses and Elijah, who God also talked to at Mount Sinai. and this is the speculative thing,

we can't prove it, could this have been a wrinkle in time and the amount of transfiguration is this? I love this theory because we've actually, I don't remember what we talked about it once before, but the idea that there's a time event here. That's for whatever reason, it's when Yahweh is on the mountain meeting with Moses and then also meeting with Elijah, the Yahweh incarnate, Christ,

that they're actually seeing a time event. to Moses. Maybe, maybe I'm already spoiling it, but I love this idea because it's, time is an interesting construct. We live in a linear timeline, but God is outside of space and time. Like, he's looking at it all from above,

and he sees it all played out. It feels more like a circle. It feels more like a circle when you get into the blur. It's a circle, you know? Yeah, it's all a circle. So you're saying that all these events could be happening at the same time, basically? Yeah, somehow outside of,

outside of time, you know, because I do believe time's linear. And the Bible does actually communicate a linear thing, but. But there's prophecy and it tells you this things are going to happen. So how does it know it's going to happen free will? But there's these pre, these events, they're coming, you know, and we see the foreshadowing of Christ all throughout the Old Testament. And what is it? They translate.

So Jesus, the idea here, the theory here, as we speculate, right, is that Jesus, perhaps they all translate to the Holy Mountain to Sinai. And they get to witness this event where whether it happens in space or time or not is this represent, the Bible thing is always, it's representation of the law and prophets, right? And Jesus is film it, that's great. But I feel like God is so much smarter than just a simple,

there's always layers to it. It's like Jesus speaking in parables. There's like, it's an onion. So what else is happening here? Which I like that idea that not only is that that representing, but it's also this could be, perhaps a spacetime event where you have. Here's just an additional thought that I was just thinking about as we were discussing this.

We all remember Peter's reaction to that moment. And for us blockheads, we can relate to Peter, every opportunity as he's always putting his foot in his mouth. And this incredible moment is unfolding. And Peter says, uh, uh, uh, and then he says something that for our modern context is very difficult to, Why does he say that? It's so random. Lord's Reconstruction shelters. But what if, what if Peter was realizing that moment that was unfolding millennia before on Mount Sinai?

And as Joel had said earlier, that the invitation to come up on the mountain was part of a, in Hebrew, they called a Katuba like a marriage contract. And when Peter says, should we build shelters, what if he was thinking, should we build like a hoopah, like a marriage canopy to commemorate this moment? I was just thinking about that because perhaps what if Peter was making the connection of the Mount Sinai events unfolding? Or Succa. Or Suka, a shelter, like let's just, let's stay here. which also the Sukha and Sukkot applies to the millennial period when God now dwells with us because the whole point is that we're aliens and strangers here so yeah the imagery or he's making a tent of meeting right this idea of like he's like this is we need a tent of meeting because

God's here speaking as he did with that I love that yeah I always wondered what the significance of the three disciples being only the three of them being there was can you remind our listeners to why Elijah's part in this story because I don't remember his connection to Mount Sinai. So Elijah has a conflict with Ahab and Jezebel and they, you know, he has the showdown. And after he has this amazing victory and fire falls from heaven, he gets afraid and he flees because they're threatening his life. And so biblically speaking, it says that he went on a 40-day journey from Bercheva, which is in southern Israel. 40-day journey to Mount Sinai.

So, and then, of course, on the energy of one energy bar. Do you Google map that, that 40-day journey? Have you Google mapped it? Yeah, and kind of worked it through. Possible? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So the only two candidates that it allows is either the traditional site or lows, because then it rules out Harcacom, which is way it closer.

You could probably get there in a few days, you know, Max, that's in Israel. So that's another candidate that the biblical criteria conflicts with. But 40 days from Bercheva to Jebel Loz works. In fact, I know a guy, this funny that has lived in the area of Petra for years. He's, you know, on the spectrum, very gifted, a genius. And he actually walked from Jordan all the way down there years ago all by himself. And I was like, how in the world did you do it? And how'd you carry the water?

And he was like, you know, after a while, water was just kind of a burdened excess to carry. I'd be like, how'd you, I just look at the moon at night, huddle down and sleep and then just get up and walk. And, you know, so it's totally doable. But it's a beast of a mountain for sure. Oh, and there's another connection, by the way. This is my beloved son. So when he's in the Mount of Transfiguration, the voice from heaven says, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.

And I'm not sure if I have the other verse, but it's very, very similar to, yep, there it is. Exodus 23. Behold, I'm going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way to bring you to the, so he actually is saying that the cloud, the pillar itself is the angel of the Lord. And it's going to bring you to the place which I prepared. Be on your guard before him and obey his voice. Listen to him. Do not be rebellious toward him. He will not pardon your transgression.

who forgives sin, God, since my name is in him. So here you have a pre-incarnate manifestation of God the sun in the angel of the Lord, in the cloud, and the Lord says, obey him, listen to him,

and then at the transfiguration, he speaks from heaven, this is my son, listen to him. So again, some other parallels back to Elijah. Yes, let's go.

What are at the top of the mountain? Like there's always, I've seen things about how, what it looks like it's burnt. Is that, did you, because when we were following your journey up, you camped out in that area beneath,

beneath that next peak, which is the peak of Sinai. Did you end up going up to the top? And is it burnt like people say it is, or blackened or? I mean, you can clearly look at it. But it's basalt.

So I'm not a geologist. So the rocks down below, it's granite. It's what they call rotten granite or something. It's fairly porous. And they're both volcanic. and one has more silica. I'm not sure what causes it.

But so it's basalt. Now, could it be? Now, look at that. You know, so you go, this is the mountain that they believed was the real Mount Sinai. Could that have been because of the, you know, it says to the sons of Israel, the mountain appeared to be consumed with fire? I don't know. I don't know what caused it. My hesitancy in making a big deal of that is that you see that same distinction.

throughout the region. And we're looking at audio listeners. We're looking at a picture of the final peak, and it's got like this discoloration. The top of the mountain is clearly much, much darker than the rocks below. But as I said, people have had it tested. The minerals at the top are, it's basalt,

volcanic basalt, the rocks down below are granite. That's not too uncommon to have like a basalt layer or a basalt intrusion in the, midst of granite. I'm from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and the titans have a number of places where you have these big basalt lines running through granite, and they actually make for great rock climate. Yeah, but that's a fun story, but probably not likely that it's probably. Yeah, I'm hesitant to make so Moses. Sorry, Moses. Elijah's on this 40-day journey. I just want to cap off his connection to this and then get back to the mountain. Well, so let's, so we'll use this as a segue because here's the thing. If he

was in that cave and he was lamenting because Elijah was basically saying like, I'm the only one that's left. I'm the only faithful, godly servant. And Lord goes, okay, peewee. Like he goes, I got, what is it, 7,000 that have not bowed the knee. He goes like, yeah, I might feel like you're the only one left, but chill. But see, here's the thing is he's in that cave and he's looking down. So here's the cave. That's the pig. You can see all. The ravens, like, feed him. Yeah, he gets, that's how he, the Lord provides for him. But he's looking down directly at, and we'll look at this, what is the golden calf altar?

So not only does the Bible describe Moses's altar, it also has the story of the golden calf catastrophe. And so he would have looked down and said, oh, it's the same thing. It's always been a remnant within Israel that's faithful. It's always been, there's been, you know, the majority are rebellious. It's always been a faithful remnant. and it's always going to be that way. And my story is not new, you know,

and then the Lord reveals himself. But so the pictures now, which are petroglyphs, um, of some of the, uh, the cows that are there. In the cave?

No, not in the cave, but if you're sitting in the cave, he's looking down at the altar. Did you find anything in that cave? Um, it's just a cave, but he easily could have slept there.

I mean, it's about, you know, 50, 20 feet back and it's soft sand. I love, I love the context though, Joel because you think like you read these stories and you imagine these things but when you

see and we're taking a look here you know at these pictures of where he would have looked down and yeah he it is this parallel he's he's lamenting that like oh like Moses I'm on this mountain and in Israel is rebellion the same way they looked down and they and they were building the gold most of the seen them building the altar the golden cap below which is a really interesting perspective because I don't know when you're from absent going there it just feels so abstract sometimes in our heads to be like. And Elijah was, he was hiking there to escape being killed, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think what theologians, people are smarter than me, have talked about the significance of seeing those two giants, if you will, of figures from the

Old Testament on the Mount Transfiguration with Jesus is that both Moses who would represent the law and Elijah who represents the prophets, both the prophets and the prophets and the prophets. the law are condoning, blessing Jesus in his ministry that for once and for all, for that any human heart that would bend the knee of their heart to the leadership of Jesus, the idolatry can finally be put to rest that Elijah was seeing, that Moses encountered, and that Jesus was confronting continually throughout his ministry. which the Lord is constantly confronting in all of our lives. And then to add to that, there's a really solid case that Paul went there,

and that's where Paul received his gospel. So there's only two times that the word Arabia is used in the New Testament, and that's Galatians 1 and Galatians 4. So first Paul says, look, after I got knocked off my horse and I had my experience, he goes, I didn't consult any of the other apostles. I didn't consult any man. He says, I went to Arabia. Well, that's a weird juxtaposition.

You didn't consult man. The inference is I consulted God. So I went to Arabia to consult God. So then scholars say, did he just go to Arabia out in the desert to be alone? Well, in Galatians 4, he specifically says Mount Sinai is in Arabia. So if he's going to consult God, he was a, he was a Pharisee of Pharisees, zealous for Torah, and he goes down there and he's trying to work through this whole thing. And he goes, oh.

And he goes, no. people, aura, it's not perfect in the sense that it accomplishes perfection. Otherwise, we wouldn't need Jesus. It's perfect in what it was designed to do, which is as a tutor to lead us to Jesus. And so he comes away with this revelation. He writes Galatians, which is very, very nuanced. But he says, that is where I receive my gospel directly from God. And he goes, it was like four years later.

I went and met Peter and some of the others. And so a very, very, a logical case, again, not my weird theory, but academics would affirm this, that Paul probably spent time there as well. Wow. Which is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. So you're like laying out the case that like in ancient times, Mount Sinai would have been the place. If you're confused, you don't know what's going on. You go back there and maybe something will happen.

As a leader, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like if you show up there, chances are you're in a place where you could figure something. out or you could get some message or it's just not a random spot. Not just climbing in any old mountain and praying God, God gave me an answer. It's like you go to this mountain. Yeah.

And a lot of folks that I bring, you know, they go, man, I've been dreaming about this since I was a kid and they go, you know, I got to make it to the top. You know, we're going to meet the Lord. And it is, as I said, it's a pretty powerful place. But do bald men, their hair grows back when they get to the top? Oh, I'm going. All right, let's go. You're starting Turkey.

It might happen for you. Everybody gets their hair back. Yeah, it just pops up someplace. But I love that because I think that, you know, so often we're confused about the Old Testament. We don't really understand the significance. And there's this thread that goes all throughout the Bible, this mountain, this moment. So Elijah goes back there. Moses is obviously there.

And then three disciples, Jesus and this transfiguration moment for those listening that don't know. And then God said, this is my head. son hear him so like all these characters you think on a portal on top of perhaps mount sinai yeah i mean possibly i mean from a trinitarian perspective trinitarian theology you know as it says in john no man has seen god right no man has seen god the father but then it says god the only begotten god i i e god the son who is at the father's bosom i'm quoting king james has revealed him hath revealed him so the the role of the sun within the Godhead is to reveal because God the Father, it would burn our eyeballs out if we saw him, right? But Moses is talking to somebody face to face. But even then, his Jesus' face

is glowing. It's almost as though the container of flesh cannot quite contain the radiant, glowing glory of God, like the mask or the veil is almost being taken off. So no, Moses was not talking to God, the father he was talking to god the son so you know that's we know that's the case was it a wormhole was it outside of time again we cannot prove it's it's speculative but again if you throw that into um you know a ring of theologians i think it actually as i said i think it passes the test of like that's possible it's not it's not some crazy out there concept well joel for evidentiary reasons what what else so you go out there you're going again and he said October, you've been there multiple times. What else are you finding at the mountain or on the way

to the mountain that also reinforces for you, your case, this is the actual location of Sinai? All right. So go to the pictures of the cows. So these are, again, the petroglyphs. As I said, about 300 yards from Moses's altar. There's about a dozen or so of these cows. And then there's a few smaller murals. Now, these are petroglyphs, which is to say you've got the lighter rock underneath. You've got this darker microbial thing that's called desert varnish that happens over time. Then they chisel through the varnish to the lighter rock. So your paintbrush is a rock. So they're always very primitive is the point.

So now look at this one. See the little guy holding the tail back there. Easy to miss some of the finer details. Now keep moving forward. All right. This is a picture from the tomb of pharaoh seti in the valley of the kings in Egypt. This is Egyptian religious iconography. So for those who are listening, you've got a picture of a cow.

Go to the next slide. Shows it better. And you've got all these people. This is, again, religious iconography from Egypt. The person underneath, it looks like he's bench pressing the cow or overhead pressing the cow. Now go to the next slide. Wow. A perfect representation of because the critics say, oh, these are just farming.

scenes. These are just farmers. This is nothing to do with religion. I go, no, that's not a farmer. That's a specific image that matches exactly what we see in religious iconography. So is this particular mural portraying the biblical golden calf catastrophe, which is there was a party, if you will. There was an orgy is really the word party has sexual connotations. It was a religious pagan celebration with the cows and the celebration was something that they commonly did in Egypt. You later see it in Greece and Crete. Eventually, this is actually where we get cowboy rodeos today. I'm just kidding.

Well played, sir. So people are listening. The pictograph on the wall, this carving on the wall is the exact same imagery as what we just saw in the tombs in Egypt. So there's a man, a smaller person underneath a big cow. with its hands underneath its belly kind of looks like it's holding it up but the the the same it's the same it looks it looks the same it's not much cruder on the rock but you have like this like like for like you have the same imagery a bunch other stuff around it's just an another amazing coincidence now keep feeding through the slides go down now see he's holding the tail

that was the same thing you see in the the Egyptian iconography and then keep going Okay, so this is Elie Shukron, as I said, one of Israel's most legendary leading biblical. He's one of the most leading biblical archaeologists in the world. Yeah. And he got all excited when he saw this. He said, that is a Hebrew alif, an ancient Hebrew, basically an A. And the original early Hebrew alif, it's like a cow or bull's head. So go to the next slide, I've got a, there's a chart.

You can see up there at the very top. And that cow's head eventually becomes our modern A. Go to the next slide. Wow. and see the i mean again and here's you know again a renowned this is not me making the claim and he's like that is a hebrew alif and where where is this joel like is this on the mountain is this on the way to the mountain where is this are these carvings it's all within a few hundred yards of the base of the mountain so from moses is altered to this it's about three 400 yards um let's see

what you're saying is that this is rarely archaeologists is saying what we have here in arabia at the base of this mountain our hebrew letters an iconography that looks the same as we would have seen in Egypt, which of course, the Dasha says that we just had a people group that came out of Egypt. Yeah. And knows these ceremonies. Cow imagery.

No, knows these pictures and knows these rituals. Really, what was happening was a ritual, right? So, and they're recording the same thing that we see in SETI's tomb. Now,

this one's a little, go down to the picture of just below the one that I'm in. This is a picture of the entire mural. Now, again, the critics say these are just farmers. Right. I didn't notice this again, these kind of crude pictures. Every single one of the humanoids in this have erections.

Okay. Oh boy, here we go. Not farmers. But the point is, that's exactly what's it? The orgy. Yeah, the Bible, it says they ate and drank. So the elders on top of the plateau, they ate and drank and they saw God. The golden calf idolaters that says they ate and drank and they rose up to play.

And that word play has sexual, it's like a pagan orgy. So I go, it's portraying once again exactly what the Bible conveys. And then go down to this next picture. Six to midnight. Six to midnight out there. They're dancing. So it says when Moses came down and he saw the dancing, he smashed the tablets. And I mean, I don't know.

To me, it looks like dancing, a bunch of people dancing. So, you know, the critics can say, well, that's like, yeah, it does look like dancing. Yes, that's not just farmers. Yes, it does look like a jib-it. It's just coincidence. but at what point do the coincidences stack up so much so that you're now becoming foolish? You're in a very strong circumstantial case.

There's too much circumstance for this to be. So to back it up from the beginning, you've got cave drawings of giants and you've got the arrows, the battle. You roll in, you've got the altar at the base, which is with the pillars, and you've got the two-tiered mountain that you would have needed

to have the midsection where they had the banquet and then they're like continue up. They have the cave there, and then they have the calf imagery that goes back to Hebrew writing, and then you have this evidence of this orgy that's also talked about. And does that have anything, does this cow imagery have anything to do with the golden calf? Yeah. Okay. So it would have been in that area.

And interestingly, too, in terms of the shape of the mountain, because Moses comes down the mountain and Joshua meets them, and they go, we can hear something in the camp. They go, it doesn't sound like the sound of victory or defeat. It sounds like they're singing, but they can't see them. So you go, how is it that Moses comes down the mountain, but he can't see them? He can hear him, but he can't see him because he was in the bowl. He was in that plateau. So again, the topography matches the biblical description.

There's another picture of the dancers. And by the way, when you see these petroglyphs, when you see that people with their hands up, they seem to have a dongle. They seem to be males. When you see the figures with their hands down, they don't. But I looked at this and I was like, wait, are these guitars? Are they, what, like their hands are not on the guitars? You've got two people with swords going through them.

Oh. And they're the same figures that you see that were dancing, you know? And so I go, is this portraying the killing, the piercing? And so I put in the shish kebab. Are these human shish kebabs? Yeah. And it kind of has that appearance. Let me see what I have.

And the picture is blurry. Perfect. Yeah, yeah. the blurry shish kebubbs. Okay, go back up to that, right the picture. Our audio listeners are like, what is happening? So what other evidence? Is there a cemetery where they buried the 3,000 people that they killed?

There's a massive cemetery. It's about five miles. It's a few miles from the mountain. But here's the thing. There's a Japanese team of archaeologists that just started excavating it. So this has never been excavated. The locals call it the cemetery of the Ahudis. So the locals are like, yeah, this is a Jewish cemetery.

They're just beginning to excavate it for the first time. And they're just going down an inch per. And each one of these are like family graveyards. And there's dozens upon dozens of them throughout this massive field. I'm not an archaeologist, but it seems to me a cemetery is an archaeologist gold mine. So we'll see what this produces over the next couple of years. For the biblical narrative, if you're new to reading the Bible or exploring the claims of the Bible, or if you're not familiar with the Old Testament,

Nation of Israel is led out of bondage and slavery from Egypt. They are led through the Red Sea, which we believe crosses the Gulf of Aqaba, several-day journey to the foot of this big mountain. God reveals himself. He invites Moses and the 70 elders up onto the mountain. He shares the terms of his covenant. Meanwhile, the people are down below in the valley,

and they're like, where is this Moses guy? He's been gone for a long time. They start to party. They sculpt a golden calf. In the Bible, it says that they name the calf, Yahweh, the name ascribed to the God of the Bible that delivered them. But because of their 400 years of slavery and captivity, they ascribe savior powers to an idol. And then they start to party. Joshua and Moses hear this.

Like, you better go down and straighten out your boys. They've gone. The wheels are getting really wobbly. The wheels are falling off. Moses comes down in a fit of rage, breaks the tablets. And then he says, who's on the Lord's side? There are a group of Levites that say, we're on your side. They go throughout the camp killing people that were partying and worshiping this golden

calf. It sounds brutal and savage, but God's holiness is not to be something to be trifled with. And that's what results in the death of 3,000 people at the base of Mount Sinai, which is what in these petroglyphs we're seeing potentially represented. Well, this is, this is amazing, because I'm just like the picture of Mount Sinai you've painted for us, our listeners today, and the historical accuracy, Antichrist guy, is the golden calf, the Antichrist? Oh, is that a picture of the Antichrist?

Yeah. That's a good... Because it's linear time in circle. Is that representing the future, too? Well, I worship this golden version of a true sacrifice, but it's not the real one. I'd have to think about that. Okay.

I would say this, though, the primary Antichrist figure in the story is Pharaoh. Pharaoh is actually the original antichrist figure. Later, it's Antiquas Epiphanes. Also, Goliath is a huge one. Cicero. Huge one. Nebuchadnezzar.

Yeah, did you catch that? As a giant joke, see that? Biggin, that's good. That's subtle and good. I like it. Second Samuel, first, second Samuel actually is filled with snake motifs and imagery. Yeah. Which the snake.

Yeah, there were many antichrist, basically. Yeah, many historical antichrist that are pointing to the ultimate one. No, but I think the interesting about this. this iconography too is that we've talked a little bit on the show about the idea that it's probably wasn't a calf it was a bull like and this is bull imagery right like the idea of a calf is not a great translation and then you have in borat voice strong like bulls represent strength that's how they they're the ones that plow the earth and all that type of stuff strong and plow through which we get life but also was the imagery of l like in the in the canaanite religion was a bull like so you have

the father of bail and this canada they represented their god as a as a bull but also was the as a bull. It just seems like that circle language, like if the transfiguration happened there and like some sort of portal, it's some sort of like the future, the past and the present all happening at the same time, you would think that there's more to this mountain that might foreshadow things to come. That's just what it seems like is happening there. What about the split rock? That's the only thing I wanted to get to because everyone's seen this picture in Saudi that I've seen it a hundred times, but there's this rock that looks like it's split completely down the middle. And so that part of the story for folks that aren't as familiar with Exodus is that

the old split rock. The people need water, right? And then Moses in a fit of rage instead of Oh, that's a different one. This is not the same rock. Yeah, there's two, there's one at the beginning of the Exodus and one at the end. Edit that out, Dan. I want to sound too dumb. All right. No, no. It's actually Michael. Michael Heiser made the same mistake, so you're in good company. Leave it in. Me and Mike. In this picture, you can see me down at the base just for size. the rock itself, just the rock, is six stories. It's about 65, 70 feet, 20 plus meters tall. That's me just estimating when people go up there

and do in the, here's a person that's about six feet and then doing it. It's in that range about six. Massive split rock. How close is this to Sinai? So it's in the right location, which is close to. It's just on the northern side. And it matches the biblical descriptions

because the Lord says to Moses, he says, Moses, go and strike the rock at Horib. So Horib is just an alternative name, Sinai Horib. It's the same region. So now imagine you're right here and the Lord says, go strike the rock at Horib. You're like, which one? Because there's like 95 gazillion rocks. So to me that conveys that the rock at Horib was a well-known landmark. It had to be. It had its own name. Like you've got to be pretty special to stick out here. And this rock, just like if you were to go to Arches National Park, or something. It is a natural, phenomenal formation. And it says at the end of Isaiah 48, that, you know, basically at the end, I don't know if I have the verses, it says, you baka, you clave the rock, you split the rock, and the water gushed forth. So again, we're looking for a prominent landmark that's in the vicinity that is split from the top to the bottom and it gushed forth. This is not, you know, uh, Beverly Hillbillies, you know, out came some bubbling crude or whatever.

It's gushed forth. And then actually I've got to think I've got a picture there when you climb up to the base. Yeah, go down right there. And to me, I'm again, I'm not a geologist, but to me it looks like there's massive water erosion. Look at that. Now there is a lot of similar formations in the area. So again, I want to be careful not to overhype it, but it does to me again look like you can see it. I would love to get someone in there with a seismic shoot and see if there's a straw under it. You know, there's so much to be done. I think to your point though, right, if you, like,

practically, if you're going to, like, hydrate a million people, that's a lot of water. Yeah. And so you would think you'd find water, like erosion, like mass water erosion in a space where you have that much water. Because we're not talking about everybody gets, it's not us for having to drink water out of Iraq, we're talking the nation of Israel. That team of scientists, They're getting done with the great pyramid of Kufu.

They need to come over here, see if they can see a big water spout underneath that rock. Check it out. Yeah, logistically, the Exodus was a nightmare. I mean, depending on how many people. And there's a broad range, by the way, scholars debate. Some say there was as little as like several thousand people. Some say there was as many as three million. Somewhere in between there, it's a lot of people to eat, feed, all that kind of stuff.

So the miracle. So what the Lord did at the beginning is he demonstrates his strength and his power. He rips the ocean in half. He drowns Pharaoh. He's doing all the, you know, at the front end of trying to woo the woman, you're strutton. Later, you're saying, and I can provide for you too. You know, he does all the quail and manna and water. And he's like, I'm not just, he's wooing Israel away from the false gods of.

And Israel someone was like, I'm tired of cooking. I want to get this man anymore. And this might be just like off, off the beaten. path question, but what do you guys think Moses' staff represents here? You know, like, that's like always been a blurry part of my thought. Like, why does he carrying the stick around? What is that? You know, that sounds, you know, someone would label that new age, you know, uh, or a magical staff. Yeah, he's got a magical staff with him this whole time. And what, what significance does play in this story? I'll share my pastoral perspective. If you think about, uh, do you follow that

handle on Instagram like Stick Nation you know when people find these stick do you know I'm not big on stick it's fantastic you you're welcome from all over the world like find these sticks that look like Ray guns or you know wizard staffs or things

and they're like look at this and then they use their imagination to talk about what this stick could be used for and it gets like thousands of likes and follows so internet is undefeated I desperately want to infiltrate this community Well, this is your gateway right here. Did you hear that?

So think about a staff or a stick. What intrinsic powers does it have? Absolutely. Yeah, none. None at all. It's just a stick. You can find them on the ground anywhere. And my thought would be it's a beautiful picture of the God of the Bible,

desiring to partner with people that, to do extraordinary. things that would be otherwise really, really ordinary like a stick. Ordinary and also a tool, right? A tool in the hands. It's ordinary and worthless unless you turn it into a tool, right? Yeah. And there's one point where he says, Moses, take your staff, but after a certain point, it's then called the staff or the rod of God.

It's been used by the Lord for a number of incredible things, and that staff then becomes transformed from something common, ordinary, simple, and basic into something used and extraordinary by the Lord. But only because God decided to use something ordinary. How about that? It may have been a shepherd staff too, right? 40 years, he's a shepherd. And Ron Wyatt found it.

Oh, yeah, he got it. There's a super cool little Jewish tradition. I'm not sure exactly where it comes from, but it says that Moses is standing there in the first time, he commanded the ocean to split and it didn't split and then Moses was like god what do I do and the Lord said what do you do to an unruly child Moses said discipline him and he said do likewise so then he whacked it and it split over you know whether that's true or not but it's kind of a neat little story yeah discipline the ocean well I think one of the most you know like the image

burn in my mind is the old school 10 commandments movie standing there and he's got the staff in his hand And it just seems like there's so much there. It turns into a snake at one point. He splits the rock with it. Go back to the picture of the split rock. It's also refidim. So there's a massive plane right by this. Refedim is where they fought the Amalekites.

And in the story, Moses holds the staff up with both hands all night long. Her and Aaron get under him and prop him up. So think about this. Moses who is a prophetic prototype for Jesus is the greater Moses. Biblically speaking, Moses speaks of a prophet greater than me that's coming. He clearly fulfills that. But here is the prototype. And the only time that Israel gains the victory is when he's basically in the form of his ultimate type of the cross.

And they hold them up. Israel has the victory. So here's Moses all night. That's pretty powerful that his staff gets incorporated into that. Yeah. It occurs to me, though, that when you have God's design, which is that in the Old Testament, he meets with Moses, he meets with his guy on a mountain, meets the Elijah on a mountain. We see, I think in a lot of pagan religions and stuff, they also go to the mountains,

top of mountains, whether it be Native Americans talking about this is a holy mountain, like Mount Shasta, whoever, or you have effigies, like Nate talking in the beginning about pyramids. You have this, this feels like a rip off of now these lesser Elohim, as Mike would talk about these fallen angels that are in Dude Army 32, given the nations. They sort of do the same thing.

They're like, well, you can come meet with me on this mountain. We were in Machu Picchu and there was these shamans that were saying, like, I gotta go up on that mountain to meet with like the god of this, of this mountain, this area, this area. And that's what they do. It's very lost on me. We did any episode with Dr. Joel Matamalee

that Eden was on a mountain as well as he thinks as well. Eden was where? Eden was on a mountain. Oh, on a mountain, yeah. Yeah. So it's like the original.

We talk about coincidental. That doesn't seem coincidental to me or accidentally either, that there's sort of this, this copying as the, as the kingdom of darkness does of the way that God operates and they're doing, they're sort of doing the same thing. Like, oh, I can do the same thing. Like, come meet with me on a mountain,

whether it be, you know, Bail or the Egyptians in there, or whether it be, you know, the ziggurats of, you know, of Sumer and Babylon, they're creating these mountain places where they go to meet with their gods. As a counterfeit. As a counterfeit. Yeah. Yeah.

So, as we start to land the plane here, maybe if I could attempt to stitch together to... Please do. Interesting things that I'm seeing playing out of the course of our conversation. So you have Joel, who is such a dear friend of mine, who I look up to, who I respect the amount of time that he's put in to study these subjects and others. The role that he plays in the broader Christian community and telling things like they, telling things like they are, the heat that he takes. but then also being able to introduce wonder. How many times has Joel today said,

he's putting forth physical evidence that he's seen. He's backed it up with the biblical narrative that anybody who has a Bible can open up and look at. And he says, he just suggests, hey, what about this? And what it does for what I think it will do for the audience, is it invites them to wonder. And for so long, I've been in pastoral ministry for over 20 years, and for so long, I feel like the church has left wonder at the door. We don't want to wonder about things. We don't want to

use our imaginations. That's where you can get yourself off into the weeds, off into a ditch. we're going to leave imagination and wonder at the door. And I think that really your podcast is part of the point of the sword inviting the Christian community to wonder again. And the things that are being stitched together are the world that doesn't go to church, the world that doesn't know about God, the world that doesn't read the Bible but are big fans of your show, they have no problem with wonder. You can say, you can say portal, you can say wormhole, you can say time travel, and they're like, yep, okay, yep, I'm with you, I'm with you. But when you say those things in the Christian world, there has been such a reluctant, like people get tense and cringy. And one of the

things that I love so much about you guys in this podcast is, I like to think of these, the things that we've been talking about today, like one or two puzzle pieces on a big puzzle. And I know that that analogy has been used here on this show before. But when you get a puzzle, it comes in the box. And in the box are all of the pieces. They're all jumbled up. And what's on the lid of the box? Picture.

The picture, the finished image. Yeah. In a similar way, I believe that the kingdom of God is like a puzzle. when the box is opened up, the pieces are spilled out. Instead of a picture as a reference, we have a biblical narrative. And so imagine a plain cardboard box with all of the puzzle pieces, but then instead of a picture on the lid, it's like a 15-page booklet describing it. How much more challenging would that puzzle be?

The puzzles my dad gets. There's no picture. You just got to put it all together. We just read about what it looks like. And this is exactly, Hey, Dad, you love these kind of puzzles. This is,

uh, so, so that's how, that's what I see your role and, and all of our blurry friends is being able to look at the narrative description, look at the pieces here and say these pieces, there's no extraneous pieces that come in the box. That would be awful.

And there's no missing pieces. That wouldn't be a good puzzle. The pieces all do fit. together. And I think that you guys are doing an incredible job of flipping over the pieces and what the church for generations has said, no, no, no, I don't know about those. You know, giants and the blurry things. They don't fit. They don't fit, but they're in the box. And I think you guys are doing a great job of flipping them over and saying, guys, this piece is in the box. And other friends of the blurry verse that come in and share things with you, they're able to be like, well, look at this piece.

Wow, it fits really well with this piece and this piece. And so I think that for such a time as this, you guys are flipping over pieces and inviting the church to look at some of these pieces that have been pushed off to the side for a long time. Yeah, I appreciate that. And sometimes a piece you think will go fit with another piece, and it doesn't. And I think you have to have the humility to go that doesn't fit there. It fits over here. And I think you put together 15 great pieces or so of Mount Sinai.

And here in Bluey Cushes, we're going to rename your, give you a new nickname. No more Antichrist guy. Sinai guy. It's the Sinai guy here. That's the Sionai guy. That's better. Sir, Sionai. Mr. Sinai.

Better. But, Joel, my last question for you. Thank you so much, Brian, by the way. That was kind because sometimes doing this, you know, when you're trying to put these pieces together, get a lot of hate mail. So it's good to get some. You should try being. the Antichrist guy.

But if you remove the understanding of Mount Sinai from the Old Testament, what do you think that does? Are you trying to put this piece back into people's sort of biblical timeline? Because we say a lot of times on the show, if you take Genesis 6 out of the Old Testament, you're left with a lot of confusion because you have these giant clans. You have this weird thing going on with tribes and nations and why are they killing off this? And Christians took that out. But if you take Mount Sinai out, what happens, like, to your faith and, like, your understanding? I mean, you lose everything.

It is the foundation. Christians don't understand. Christians think the Bible starts out at the bottom, and it slowly builds and ramps and ramps up to the New Testament. And then we get to Jesus, and that's the tall mountain. Like, if you're to diagram the Bible out, you've got the massive mountain of creation. Obviously, that's huge. But the mountain of the Exodus and the theophany at Sinai is actually bigger. It has more prominence than creation itself.

And then the Bible ramps up to the return of Jesus, which is the ultimate final far greater mountain. But that's the way from a literary prophetic perspective the Bible is written. You take away the foundation. It doesn't make any sense. Well, I'll just add this to close and kind of let my freak flag fly, so to speak. As I said, I'm not a huge woo-woo guy. My wife's very sensitive to the spirit.

When my friend first told me, he invited me, he said, I can get you a visa, I can get you in. And I said, all right, let's do it. I tangibly felt a heavy, seriously dark presence. I was like, what in the world? Like, I don't even know how to describe it. And I have, I've had several years since then of solid, unrelenting spiritual warfare.

That's pretty undeniable. I won't get into all the details. But I believe it was for a purpose. I believe that my role in all of this has had a purpose. I believe that the Lord had the kingdom closed. I believe that the Lord had this forgotten for a reason. I believe it's been preserved for reason. I believe it's being highlighted at this moment for a reason.

I believe that MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia that's changing laws, that this is all happening now for a reason. I believe it's in the heart of the Islamic world for a reason. because I believe that the Lord has a testimony with this mountain. Again, when the whole world looks and goes, okay, so you're telling me that there's solid actual evidence, as we've just seen, pretty overwhelming evidence for some of the craziest most foundational stuff in the Bible,

which, again, all of it is a prophetic prototype, a dress rehearsal for the far greater the offany at the end of the story and the marriage supper, the betrothal supper that they ate on that mountain, is then culminates on Mount Zion. The whole story starts on Sinai and ends on Zion. I believe that the Lord has a prophetic testimony. And so I believe the warfare was very real.

And I believe, and there was a certain time. Actually, you guys had Tom Doyle on. I took him the first time when we took a group. We came in, when they opened Saudi to tourism, we brought the first tour group in the history of the kingdom that were not Muslims, 25 Christians. We went to the mountain and we said, Now you're talking about territorial principalities,

and I don't understand how this works. Again, I'm not a woo guy. I felt like we were to all hold hands around the altar and say, Lord, we thank you, this is your mountain. We thank the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the royal family that they're welcoming us in. Now we say, Lord, cause your face to shine on this kingdom. And it was like in that corporate prayer,

I felt like something lifted that had been, I've been carrying for a few years of all the warfare. And it's, I believe that the Lord is almost like reclaiming his mountain right now, if that makes sense. Boom, I love it. No, I think I was gonna say, like when you talk about like the scriptural importance of Sinai, I think the other side is now we have boots on the ground

a place to point to, there's more evidence for the validity. For people that don't believe, it's like, you know, least droble case for Christ. You have this, you have this evidence, you can touch that correlates to a thing that most of, you know, unbelieving, a secular scholarly would say, oh, the Bible, we can't prove any of that,

but here you can. And to me, that would be why the warfare exists because now you got more to point to. It's not just those things that are in the Holy Land. Here's something and here are all the markers. Let's say this actually happened and it happened here. Yeah, shoot, it's just, you know, the word of God is inerrant to us who believe,

but to a world that doesn't, it's gonna be very hard to be like, okay, well then, all this all real places, real stuff, real happening. And then we can point to, They rock and to artwork and to pictograms and to altars and to places that correlate with all this stuff and that, to me, is God, it's like he's, it's like he's allowed,

as you say, I feel like he's allowing these things to happen because he's saying, yeah, I'm here and I was here, you know. The Dead Sea Scrolls are locked up in this cave and then all of a sudden they just randomly, you know, someone discovers them at this time, you know, there's all these things being discovered right now. And I think sometimes I feel like the darkness tries to hide some of these things.

And in a weird way, they preserve them. And then it comes out and then people believe again. You know, like you said, this is in the heavy Muslim area. All of a side, boom, the mountain of God comes out. What's that going to do? It's going to change their faith. They're going to go, oh, wait, I got it wrong. And this thing that was supposed to be hidden is actually the thing that when, you know,

because we don't want people to believe and the truth. biblical story, we flip that puzzle piece over at a certain point in time, and boom, it hits harder. I love imagination and wonder. I was born in 74, so I grew up in the 80s. And so many incredible 80s movies about wonder and imagination. You have Star Wars. You have never-ending story. Come on with Falcour, the luck dragon, you know. And so I love being able to not just wonder, but I like to connect wonder and reality. And I was reading a verse in Psalms a couple of years ago where it says that God led Israel by a path through the Red Sea,

which they didn't know about. And when I read that, I said, man, from the grammar, it looks as if there was a path actually there that was covered by water. God knew about it, but Israel didn't. And so that ignited my wonder and imagination. And someday I would like to connect some reality to that sense of wonder and retrace the Exodus route. Let's go. On bicycles.

Yeah. We'd love to be part of that. Yeah. You're going to ride a bike? I'm going to ride it. This dude climbed Juanapitia Pichu in jeans and Air Force One. I thought we were going to lose my co-hosts on the area, we're in Peru. He made it, he made it through.

I had to go skinny jeans, dude. Skinny jeans. Yeah. Well, it kind of acts like compression, you know, for like top athletes. It kept them together. I was like, dude, I got to have the Marnie McFly uniform all the top. It's on brand here. That's right.

I'm the same way, man. Everybody brings all this special like travel hiking gear. And I just wear what I wear every day. That's comfortable. I love it. It's like the guy that ran the marathon in jeans. See that guy recently? Yeah.

Oh. finished like second in his class. He ran it in jeans. Wouldn't it be amazing? It doesn't sound amazing to me at all, actually. So Joel and I, we get together, you know, we cut up, we talk about life, we talk about real things, we encourage one another through hardships, and sometimes we dream together, and one of the dreams that we have concocted would be to take that tire mountain bikes, start in Egypt, and that picture on the screen there,

We don't have an overlay of the proposed route, but how cool would it be? I don't want to like walk or run. I've already run across one country and that was enough. But to be able to ride a bike retracing the route of the Exodus to just, just see, just connect some dots and allow your imagination to become saturated with the story of the Exodus and come through, leave Egypt. through the Sionai Peninsula, dodging ISIS caravans, crossing the Red Sea. We've got, we've got a friend that's like, oh, you guys want to, like, snorkel or scuba

and look for sunken chariot wheels? Yeah, we can do that. Hey, Lubin, you for scuba? You for scuba? You for scuba? You for scuba? Lubin. And then cross sea, Mount Sinai continue through the country of Jordan and then cross the Jordan River

into Israel. How great would that be? The Trinity Triathlon. They, oh, yeah. Dude. You guys are putting together. Hasag trademark.

Okay. Yeah. I do, I do want to. Yeah, you got a present. Yeah, I've got a present for you guys. You know, read your Hebrew Huffy all the way to the, uh. Get my Hebrew Huffy all the way through. So, uh, I was a big.

Red C. Red Line. Oh, here we go. I was a big fan of this. Man, these guys just, they keep coming. I was a big fan of this. I know that you guys are too. And, uh, I ordered this special. Maybe we can wind down thing.

with Moses mongoes. Yeah, there we go. But no kid having a good conversation. Oh, here we go. Wouldn't be complete without some big league chew. Look at that. And so, yeah, guys, we can get into this. Oh, yeah, yeah, get into it, fellas.

Oh, it's got a 2060. It's not like the original. Get a chaw. Get a chaw of that. Brian got us brought a can in, an old school can, Folgers can, like. Oh, yeah. And a packs a big league chew.

Remember that? This little league, bro. Dude, you know what's funny, guys. And the grape was the best flavor. If you save any candy from the 80s worth far more than any baseball card you ever had. And then I have one more, I have one more thing that can maybe be an addition to the,

I always like to come with gifts. How is it? I was eating the whole pack. Those are not watching. You get a big chaw of that? I'm going right back to the script. Look at that shirt. Oh, what this?

Hey, if you're listening, Brian's got a shirt of Bigfoot and... He's like grandma. That's no, that's Dr. Laura. And Dr. Laura? She's baptizing Sasquatch. Oh, my gosh. Incredible. Laura's saying, are you immortalized on Brian's.

You guys are a combo. So there's a little t-shirt of Dr. Laura, baptizing Sasquatch. I feel like, of all of our blurry friends, she would be like the most qualified, you know? and so she's actually coming to speak at our church in May. And so she just lives in Salt Lake. She was just here a few weeks ago. Coming around. Oh, amazing.

So here's the last thing. And this is great to bring out around, you know, maybe you're like at one of the Costa Rica retreats or, you know, you're just having a blurry campfire. One of you slips off the kids around the campfire. And this is guaranteed to, like, Like have them not sleep for a week. But this is my very special Yeti call. Okay?

And so you'll get a lot. Let's go. You'll get a lot out of this. But it's right here. Moisten my fingers here. And it has a better effect if you close your eyes. Okay. So just picture you're 12 years old around a campfire.

You know, and your uncle slips off. And he's like making that noise. What? And the kids are saying, what is that? What is that? But I've just got this little leather thonging here. It's a saskatch call. And so I think.

What saskatch has some GI issues. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, he is notorious for having IBS. But I thought I'd leave this with you guys as a present. You can take it with you. The real saskatch call. Maybe on top of Montchupacchoo or when you go to maybe serpent mound in Israel, you give a

Sasquatch call. We'll call him in. And you'd never know. We've got to get Laura there to back. Don't take that to Mount Shasta and pull that string. You might be afraid of what happens. Things will come out of the bushes. Man, guys, I appreciate you both.

And thank you for making this a lively, blurry event and bringing a full circle. And just like maybe the Transfiguration was a big full circle. We don't know, but I think we hit the ground running here, and we don't have a belief problem here. We're just trying to flip those puzzles and try to make sense. sense of what, like, okay, how can we make sense of the things that have gone past a traditional explanation and we believe there's an actual mountain here. And I think a lot of modern Christians have put this stuff in the category of myth and allegory. And there's actually data. There's

actually like stones you can touch. There's mountains you can climb. There's things you can see. And that is a big part of the skeptic that we speak to on our show. We do that a lot. But then we go way far beyond that and you guys didn't fail to deliver today. So Joel, tell our listeners where they can get your books and then Brian where they can come to your church and hang out with you and maybe bike across. Get chased by some Taliban. I don't know what's going on. I did too much Big League chew. I do too. I remember why I used to eat it actually. It's so good. I just want to eat it. So yeah, my website is jolestrumpet.com. Yeah, take groups to Saudi and so forth.

And yeah, all my information is there. Jolsh trumpet.com. And yeah, thank you guys so much for having me on. It was a real, the whole thing was just kind of, I just made a video one day being silly and threw it out there. And then everyone's like, you should go on. I was like, I had never even considered it.

This was tremendous fun. And I really appreciate the invite. Yeah. We had all our fans yelling at us. It was Joel, Joe coming on? Get him on. Get him on. So I have different socials, but who cares about those?

Find you in the comments of the sticks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just come to Jackson Hole, ask around for Brian Hunter. I'll either be skiing or climbing in the mountains or at church. So let's go to church together. Let's go climb a mountain together. Not at the million-dollar cabboy bar. Well, thanks, guys.

You can find me there too. Yeah, I like that. Tribe church. Thanks, gentlemen. Appreciate so much. Maybe there's a blurry trip in the future. future here. We'll, I'm sure we'll have some lunch here and talk about all the

weird ideas coming out of this episode. But thank you guys so much and we'll have to do it again. Woo-hoo. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks guys. Look at the chew so good.