There are also several interesting theories about the present location of the Ark of the
Covenant. These include:
– Under the Temple Mount
Jewish scholars believe that it is quite possible for it to be under the Court of Wood of Solomon’s
Temple, near the Western Wall (“The Wailing Wall”).
– In Ethiopia
In an underground Temple beneath the ancient church of Zion in Aksum, northern
Ethiopia, it is said that there are seven concentric rings of interior circular walls. The Ark of the
Covenant is supposedly in the innermost ring, “The Holy of Holies.”
The Ethiopian monarchy began with the Queen of Sheba and her son, Menelik I. Menelik
I was the offspring of her marriage to King Solomon of Israel. This royal dynasty has lasted for
three thousand years. The late Emperor Haile Selassie was part of this dynasty.
Emperor Haile Selassie, in our generation, called himself “The Conquering Lion of
Judah.”
Ethiopian tradition explains that the Ark of the Covenant was brought to Ethiopia by
Prince Menelik, who was raised until he was 16 years old in Jerusalem. Solomon had a copy of
the Ark made for Menelik, but he supposedly took the original because of Solomon’s apostasy.
The history of both the Ethiopian Jewish community (the Falashas) and the history of the ancient
Christian Coptic community in that country are fascinating and certainly go back two or three
thousand years.
– On Mount Nebo
The apocryphal book of II Maccabees says that Jeremiah the prophet hid the Ark in a
cave on Mt. Nebo (Jordan) at the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the City when the
prophet was kidnapped by his own countrymen and taken to Egypt.
In 1982, a team that included Tom Crotser, Jim Bollinger, and the astronaut Jim Irwin,
claimed to have found and photographed the Ark in a cave on the mountain.96
– Other Possibilities
The late explorer, Ron Wyatt, gave a report of discovering the Ark of the Covenant in a
cave at Golgotha. He took pictures, but they were too foggy to validate his claims. He also
claimed that the Ark was under an earthquake fissure so that the blood of Christ that poured out
when he was pierced by a sword dripped onto the Mercy Seat.97
In the ―Ark of the Covenant‖ section of Prophecy Central we have listed several other
theories that have been promoted by various individuals. These stories have proposed that the
Ark might someday be found in Zimbabwe, The Dead Sea area, an Egyptian temple in a Hamas
camp in the West Bank, in Rennes-le-Chateau in southern France (by the Knights Templar), and
in Heaven.98
Of course it is very possible that it simply does not exist any longer because it would be
defiled in the coming Third Temple, and would no longer be necessary in the Forth Temple
because God himself will be with us in person by that time. Jeremiah 3:16 says that when
Messiah returns the Ark will be remembered no more.
