Arguments of Ignorance VI: A House of God

Jesus & John Walk on Water
Painting in Baptistery-Dura Europos
232-240 AD

Mark 2:11-12: "I tell you, arise, take up your mat, and go to your house." He arose, and immediately took up the mat, and went out in front of them all; so that they were all amazed, and glorified God.

Romans 16:5: "Greet the assembly that is in their house."

There are many that believe that there were originally no churches built for the Christians. A simple perusal of the texts in the New Testament written by Paul and Gospel writers clearly show that the homes or believers, often rich widows were often used by the early Christians (men were being martyred more frequently by the time the house churches were being used). This was often denied as there was little or no historical evidence until the last hundred years.

On the edge of the Syrian desert, soldiers digging a trench uncovered painted walls. It was a lost Roman border town. When an enemy army was coming, the town had buried the street along its wall under a huge ramp of earth to make the wall stronger. The town fell anyway,and the earth kept everything inside. One buried house had a room with a baptism pool, and paintings on the walls: a shepherd carrying a sheep, and Jesus telling a paralyzed man to pickup his mat and walk. They did meet in houses.

These homes were in-fact, converted into early churches. From the outside they would appear as normal homes to military forces bent on destroying a religion that had only recently become an illegal religion in the Roman Empire.

The houses would go through architectural adaptations. The Dura-Europos building was originally a standard courtyard home built around 200 AD. Around 232–233 AD, walls were knocked down to create a larger assembly hall holding about 65 to 75 people, and another room was fitted with a masonry basin for baptisms.

As mentioned it was also built for stealth and survival. Because Christianity lacked legal status and faced sporadic, intense waves of Roman persecution (especially under Emperor Decius in 250 AD), maintaining a normal exterior was vital. Blending into a residential neighborhood allowed communities to gather without drawing immediate attention from local authorities.

Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates in eastern Syria, was found in 1920 when British soldiers digging trenches uncovered wall paintings. Excavated by Yale University and the French Academy from 1928 to 1937, it held a house converted into a church around 232-233 AD during the height of Christian persecutions. It is the oldest securely identified church building known. The surviving frescoes of the baptistry room are probably the most ancient Christian paintings in existence. 

When the Persian army besieged the town around 256AD, the defenders packed a great earth embankment against the inside of the western wall, burying the houses along Wall Street, the church and a synagogue among them. The town fell, and the embankment preserved them. The church's baptistery held a font under a canopy and paintings of the Good Shepherd, Adam and Eve, Jesus walking on the water, the women coming tothe tomb, and Christ healing the paralytic.

Arguments of Ignorance V: Song of Specifics

Song of Solomon 7:4: "Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are like the pools in Heshbon by the gate of Bath-rabbim,

Numbers 21:26: "For Heshbon was the city of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab and taken all his land out of his hand, as far as the Arnon."

Many readers will say the Song of Songs is just love-worn and pining love poetry from Solomon. This might be partially true. It also serves as a theological discourse in biblical sexuality and where it references geographical places...it is correct. It ironically is also mentioned in Numbers which should’ve given pause to the skeptics but alas, did not. So, when they found the archeological evidence, these experts looked that much more foolish.

It was long believed that Heshbon's great pool cut into its hill was just embellishment or imagery to invoke certain feelings. In the Song of Songs, the groom tells his bride, “Your eyes are like the pools in Heshbon.” Skeptics refer to this as pretty poetry and nothing more. But Heshbon was a real city on a hill in Jordan. When diggers worked down through a hilltop in Jordan, they found a huge water reservoir cut into the rock, more than fifty feet across, from the days of Israel's kings. Still, clear water in a dry land. The groom was pointing at something every traveler on that road had seen.

Archaeological excavations have uncovered remains from several historical periods, including Iron Age, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic occupations. Tell Hesban, about 12 miles (20 km) southwest of Amman, Jordan, is identified by most scholars with biblical Heshbon, the city of Sihon (Numbers 21:26) and later a town of Moab. The Heshbon Expedition of Andrews University (1968-1976) and later the Madaba Plains Project found Iron Ageremains on the summit, including a large, plastered reservoir cut into the bedrock, roughly 17 meters square and about 7 meters deep, among the largest water installations of its period in Jordan.The photo shows the summit of Tell Hesban today.

There are then the engineering claims that state that the engineering available in Solomon’s time wouldn’t have been advanced enough to produce the volume and clarity that history describes about the pools.

It had an astounding capacity for the Iron Age. The uncovered bedrock-cut reservoir measures roughly 17.5 by 17.5 meters and is 7 meters deep, capable of holding an estimated 2.2 million liters or approx. 580,000 gallons of water…the size of a modern day Olympic pool. There was an intricate network of channels and subterranean cisterns cut into the bedrock that fed the pool also. The subterranean cisterns were specifically designed to capture rainwater and maximize water storage in an arid climate.

Arguments of Ignorance IV: The Fastest Demonic Pigs in History

Mark 5:1-13 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!” Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

Skeptics reading the account of Jesus casting the demons who were called Legion into the pigs/swine were long on skepticism and short on faith. Reading the Biblical account most would say the pigs would have had to run for miles to reach the lake in a crazed demon possessed state to drown themselves. 

Mark says Jesus crossed the lake, freed a man from a legion of demons, and a herd of about two thousand pigs rushed down the steep bank into the sea. Unbelievers laugh because the town the Gospels name was miles away inland. Then a modern road crew cutting along the east shore of the Sea of Galilee hit stone walls. Under the dirt was the biggest ancient monastery ever found in the Middle East built to mark the miracle of the casting out of the Legion. Right behind it, a steep hill drops down almost to the water. A monastery lost to history until it was unearthed in 1969, the year I was born. It was built in the 5^th century about 400AD.

Kursi, on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, is widely identified with Gergesa, a reading found in some manuscripts of the Gospels (others read Gadarenes or Gerasenes; Gadara and Gerasa were the larger cities whose lands reached this region). Do note that the Bible says, region not town, city/polis in Greek. Critics pointed out that Gerasa lies some 30 miles from the lake but its ‘region’ extends significantly farther just as the suburb of Santa Monica is technically Los Angeles County. In 1969-1970 workers building a road along the shore uncovered a 5th-century church and the largest Byzantine monastery found in Israel, its wall enclosing about 145 by 123 meters, later excavated by Vassilios Tzaferis. A small chapel stood on the steep hillside just above it, and Christian pilgrims marked the spot as the place of the miracle.

So, as it turns out, the pigs weren’t as winded as one would expect from the sprint to their premature demise.

Arguments of Ignorance III: Paul & The God-Fearers

Acts 13:16: "Paul stood up, and beckoning with his hand said, 'Men of Israel, and you who fear God, listen.'" 

Acts 20:17: "From Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called to himself the elders of the assembly."

The arguments against the Bible’s historicity are not confined to the Old Testament or the prophets. The ignorance of those that wish to discredit the Scriptures is everywhere. If there is enough room to squeeze a word in, haters will try to defame...

Luke repeatedly describes Gentile "God-fearers" attached to the synagogues (Acts 10:2; 13:16, 26; 17:4, 17). In 1981 the scholar A. Thomas Kraabel argued that there was no inscriptional evidence for such a group and that Luke had created them for his story (lied or made it up). He stated this in 1981 in a published document named, ‘The Disappearance of the 'God-Fearers' in a journal called Numen. Numen (stylized NVMEN) is an international review for the history of religions. It is a ‘scholarly’ peer reviewed ‘academic’ journal covering the history of religions of any region and time. Apparently it isn’t peer reviewed or academic enough.

Two inscriptions have definitively prove him wrong since then. In the theater at Miletus where Paul met the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:17), a seat in the fifth row is inscribed TOPOS EIOUDEŌN TŌN KAI THEOSEBIŌN, "place of the Jews, who are also God-fearers."

The second being a large inscription from Aphrodisias in Caria, published in 1987, lists Jewish donors and then, under the heading theosebeis ("God-fearers"), more than fifty Gentile names. This inscription was on a 9 ft. tall marble block found during the construction of the Aphrodisias Museum. It is engraved on two sides. It is a list of over 120 donors to a synagogue and is composed of three categories of names—all males: Jews, recent converts to Judaism (proselytes), and unconverted members of the synagogue community ("godfearers;" theosebeis). It evidently dates to ca. AD 350–500) and probably served as a doorpost in a synagogue.

Arguments of Ignorance II: Setting a Clock to the Fall of Jerusalem

Another post about Jeremiah since I was jsut reading from that book.

Jeremiah described a battle on the river Euphrates where Pharaoh Necho's army was struck down by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish, in the fourth year of King Jehoiakim. Babylon kept a running record of every year on small clay tablets. One of them tells the same story. The crown prince Nebuchadnezzar crossed the river, beat the Egyptian army, and chased them south until not one man escaped home. That summer his father passed away, and he rushed back to be crowned. Same battle, same river, same year. They are synonymous.

Jeremiah 46:1-6 This is the word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the nations. Concerning Egypt: This is the message against the army of Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt, which was defeated at Carchemish on the Euphrates River by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah:“Prepare your shields, both large and small, and march out for battle! Harness the horses, mount the steeds! Take your positions with helmets on! Polish your spears put on your armor! What do I see? They are terrified, they are retreating, and their warriors are defeated. They flee in haste without looking back, and there is terror on every side, “declares the Lord. “The swift cannot flee nor the strong escape. In the north by the River Euphrates they stumble and fall.

Skeptics have routinely criticized Jeremiah’s account as being inaccurate. They’ve said Jeremiah's dates are guesswork. Very few times do the critics pay attention to what is called the superscription in the beginning of a Bible passage where it explicitly dates the prophet’s prophecies to the exact year of a specific king’s reign. In this case the fourth year of King Jehoiakim. By doing this, the prophet, therefore the Bible dates the otherwise obscure man to the definitive reign of a known king as chronological validation.

Furthermore, Babylon's own record has the same battle, the same year. The Babylonian Chronicle for the early years of Nebuchadnezzar. These are in the British Museum referred to as British Museum Tablet BM 21946 (ABC 5) -The Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle. They record that in the 21st year of Nabopolassar (605 BC) the crown prince Nebuchadnezzar marched to Carchemish on the Euphrates, crossed the river against the Egyptian army, defeated it, and pursued the survivors to the district of Hamah, so that not a single man escaped. In the same year Nabopolassar passed away, and Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon to take the throne.

Jeremiah dates the battle to the fourth year of Jehoiakim, which was also 605 BC. This tablet ironically is the same exact tablet that documents the first siege of Jerusalem in 597 BC. The subsequent destruction and exile recorded in the Bible that will take place ten years later are not covered in the chronicles or elsewhere in the archaeological record as the document was etched ten years prior to that event. 

A decade later, Zedekiah would launch another ill-advised rebellion (against Jeremiah’s protest) against the Babylonians, which was brutally crushed by Nebuchadnezzar II. In 587 BC, this second siege of Jerusalem culminated in the destruction of the city and Solomon's Temple, bringing an end to the Kingdom of Judah. 

This would thereby drive the Jews into the Diaspora. The accuracy of the prophecy was to the exact year of the first siege that would inevitably lead to the second siege and the eventual Fall of Jerusalem and the First Temple. You could’ve set you clock and calendar to the timing.

Arguments of Ignorance I: Jeremiah and Pharaoh Hophra

Jeremiah 44:30: "Yahweh says, 'Behold, I will give Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of those who seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, who was his enemy, and sought his life.'"

There are many so-called historical experts that claim the Biblical prophet Jeremiah didn’t exist or there was no way to chronologically connect Jeremiah and Pharaoh Hophra because there was no hard empirical/objective historical evidence. 

Pharaoh Hophra is Apries (Egyptian Wahibre), king of Egypt about 589-570 BC. Herodotus (Histories 2.161-169) says that after a disastrous campaign against Cyrene his soldiers revolted and made the general Amasis king; Apries was defeated in battle, kept for a time in the palace, and then handed over to the Egyptians who hated him. Herodotus adds that Apries had believed not even a god could take his kingdom from him. 

One of his obelisks, about 5.5 meters tall, was made for the city of Sais in the Nile Delta, brought to Rome in antiquity. The 5.47-meter red granite obelisk was originally carved around 580 BC under Pharaoh Apries (Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt) in his capital city of Sais. It was later brought to Rome in the 1st century AD to stand at a local temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis. It was later dug up in 1665 beside the Piazza della Minerva; in 1667 it was set on the back of a marble elephant designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Today it still stands in Rome on the back of the same elephant.

Standing in the Gap

I bring up this phrase because it is pertinent to the current state/condition of America in November 2026. We struggle and suffer at the hands of useless and clueless leadership more interested in lining their pockets and embellishing their legacies than the plight of the nation’s citizens. This is true of both dead parties and their offshoots Progressivism and MAGA. The phrase: "Standing in the gap" or  "Stepping into the breach" has sound biblical background. There are two prominent versions of it in the Old Testament. One in Ezekiel and the other in Nehemiah. It is mentioned elsewhere but I focus here mainly on Nehemiah.

The phrase “stand in the gap” is most famously linked to Ezekiel 22:30, where God says He sought a man to “repair the wall and stand before Me… for the sake of the land”. In Nehemiah 3:1–32, the “gap” is literal. After the Babylonian destruction, Jerusalem’s walls were broken and incomplete, leaving the city vulnerable. Nehemiah organized a diverse group of volunteers—leaders, priests, Levites, and common people—to rebuild the walls, each taking responsibility for a specific section. This was both a physical repair and a spiritual act of faithfulness.

The meaning in Nehemiah in proper context is that “standing in the gap” involves filling a breach or physically repairing the wall and spiritually restoring God’s presence in the community. Taking responsibility — each builder was accountable for their section, symbolizing personal ownership of the mission. It's called accountability. Interceding and protecting — by working faithfully, they shielded the people from external threats and internal spiritual decay.

It’s about taking responsibility when others hesitate. Jerusalem’s walls had been in ruins for decades. Many people lived with the problem but felt powerless to fix it. We see a similar helplessness in America. We try to fix the nation via voting and elections only to find failure in the next big liar to get elected. We should be focusing on the underlying spiritual rot eating holes in the walls of our morality. The godless drive to ignore God Himself creating a spiritual vacuum that destroys everything. 

Nehemiah stepped forward, accepted responsibility, and used his position as cupbearer to the Persian king to request permission and resources to rebuild. This willingness to act when others could not or would not is central to the idea of standing in the gap.

Theological Significance

Intercession: Like Moses in Exodus 32, Nehemiah’s leadership role included pleading for the people and appealing to God for their protection

Mediation and accountability: The builders were not just laborers; they were spiritual leaders ensuring the work honored God

Spiritual warfare: The rebuilt walls symbolized God’s people standing firm against moral and spiritual attack.

I think the most important takeaway and example though of Nehemiah for today is the crisis of leadership or more specifically, the lack of it. We in America are at a severe deficit of leadership. It is the main reason nothing is improving in the political realm and subsequently the in the public square and in the public market. There is no leadership anywhere in sight. The analogy is clear. Wherever Jerusalem is mentioned in the narrative, America could just as easily be substituted in its place. Wherever Nehemiah is mentioned we can substitute a single solitary American Christian.

Crisis Context: Why Leadership Was Needed

Jerusalem’s/America’s walls or boundaries were/are broken, its gates burned, and its people demoralized. This left/leaves the city/nation vulnerable to enemies, plagued by internal injustice, and spiritually disoriented.

Vision of a Future Rooted in Prayer

The proper response to this and Nehemiah’s/Christian’s first leadership act was prayer, seeking God’s guidance before acting (Nehemiah 1:4). He prayed repeatedly throughout the project—ten of the twelve prayers in Nehemiah are his. This spiritual grounding shaped his vision to rebuild the walls/boundaries and restore the people’s safety and dignity (Nehemiah 2:5, 2:17–18)

You’ll Face Opposition From Other Leaders

Nehemiah faced intense opposition from Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem, and others who mocked, threatened, and plotted violence (Nehemiah 4:1–3, 7–8). His crisis response blended prayer and practical action. He stationed guards and armed workers (Nehemiah 4:9, 13–18). He encouraged the people to remember God and stay resolute (Nehemiah 4:14). He discerned and avoided assassination plots (Nehemiah 6:1–4)

Integrity and Social Reform

Nehemiah confronted internal injustice, including exploitation of the poor through usury (Nehemiah 5:6–13). He refused to burden the people with taxes or take the governor’s allowance, acting “out of reverence for God” (Nehemiah 5:15). His integrity strengthened trust and stabilized the community. A good leader can change everything to a positive. Even though the disgruntled and jaded may drag him backwards.

Spiritual Renewal

After the wall’s completion, Nehemiah led the people in covenant renewal, public reading of the Law, confession, and worship (Nehemiah 8–9). This restored Jerusalem’s spiritual identity and reinforced the deeper purpose behind the physical rebuilding.

Perseverance and Results

Despite relentless adversity, Nehemiah persevered, completing the wall in 52 days (Nehemiah 6:15). His leadership transformed Jerusalem from a vulnerable, discouraged community into a fortified and spiritually renewed city. This is America today, or could be but we re plagued with self-serving and parasitic godless leadership.

The Primary leadership principles from Nehemiah for America are simple to understand but will be hard to implement because America has by-and-large turned its back on God.

We that know God must lead as the public is unable to do so properly. We must act as Nehemiah did.

We must seek God’s guidance before acting (prayer).

We must define reality honestly and assess strategically.

We must communicate an honest clear, compelling vision.

We must mobilize people through shared purpose and delegation.

We must lead with integrity and address injustice.

We must be prepared for opposition with courage and discernment.

We must persevere despite setbacks.

We need to restore spiritual and moral foundations, not just physical structures.