Prophet Found Through Archeology - Bible Proves True
I am standing on an ancient mound in the Jordan Valley, east of the Jordan River,
and this is a site that is known locally in Arabic as Tell Der Allah. A discovery was made here
which refuted the skeptics who claimed that the Bible is mythology, and this discovery provided
evidence that the Bible is not based on mythology but on history. So the earliest writings in the
Bible are the first five books, and these are the five books of Moses, and they were written at the
end of the 15th century BC. And because they're the earliest writing in the Bible, they're often
targeted by skeptics who are saying that they're largely mythology. So in the books of Moses,
one of them, the book of Numbers, Moses talks about a seer named Balaam, son of Beor, and at
this time the Israelites are camped out in the Jordan Valley on the plains of Moab. Balak, king
of Moab, sends messengers to Balaam, son of Beor, to summon him to come and to put a curse on this
people Israel. And Balaam comes, and as he goes to speak a curse on Israel, a blessing comes out
instead because the Lord is speaking through him. So we have Balaam, son of Beor, this seer in the Bible.
Excavations took place here at Der Allah in the 1960s, and they were directed by H. J. Franken,
and their most significant discovery here came in 1967. They were digging up here at the Acropolis
of the site, and they found the remains of a monumental building which they interpreted to be
a temple. And the walls of this temple had collapsed in, and as they were excavating down
through these collapsed walls, they noticed pieces of plaster that came from the inside of the wall,
and they noticed that on some of these fragments of plaster there was writing
in black and red ink. And so they did the best they could to get these different pieces of
plaster that had writing on them and piece them back together, and the inscription that they
preserved is one of the feature displays at the National Museum of Jordan in Amman today. So in
general, this inscription is very fragmentary, but the first line of it is very clear when translated
reads, the sayings of Balaam, son of Beor, the man who was a seer. So compare that, for example,
to Numbers 24.3 that says, and he spoke his message, the prophecy of Balaam, son of Beor.
So the same person, the same seer that is talked about in the Bible is also now found independently
of the Bible through archaeology, through the excavations in this site, found in an inscription
independent of the Bible. So what does this mean? It means that the places and the events and the
people that the Bible is talking about are real, and that the truth claims of the Bible
are not based on mythology, but on history.