Is the Old Testament Zionist? | Real Talk | PragerU

Every day that passes, we are unearthing antiquities in the city of David that are showing that Jerusalem's biblical heritage is true. History is being erased and therefore replaced. There was a Jewish homeland in the area way before 1948. How is it that the academics are teaching otherwise? At the United Nations, you have a body called UNESCO. So in 2016, they pass a resolution saying that Jerusalem is in fact significant just not to Jews and not to Christians. that places like the Temple Mount and the Western Wall are significant only to one group. It's to Islam. They would love it if these excavations were just buried under. Why? Because if the story that they want to tell is that Jews, and by extension, Christians are foreigners, colonizers, occupiers, then you can only hate the city of David. Because every day we're unearthing these antiquities that are showing that we've been here for thousands of years. Zeb, thank you so much for coming all the way from Israel to talk to me today. I actually met you a few months ago when I was traveling in Israel and something really interesting happened to me. I went with my family. We were visiting in Tel Aviv and we were hanging out with one of my family members who is incredibly academic, has a bunch of degrees and happens to be an educator. And she said to me, "You know, Marissa, King David never existed." And I looked at her and said,"What are you talking about? Tomorrow morning I have a trip scheduled with the family to visit the city of David." And so I bumped into you over there, one of the directors. And my first question to you was, did is King David a myth or did King David actually exist? The amazing thing is prior to 1993 if son would have said I'm going to visit the city of David there was a whole group of scholars known as the Copenhagen school and they would say city of David you mean king David from the Bible so of course obviously well you know they would say historically speaking there was no such person now you may be a person of faith you may believe that the Bible is the literal word of God and that's great but the Bible is not a history book they would say it's not a scientific text, you can't prove anything just because it says so in the Bible. Prove to us, they would say, not using the Bible, that there was a King David 3,000 years ago. And you know what? Prior to 1993, you couldn't do it. Until an excavation in Israel's north in a place called Teldan, a large stone inscription is discovered. And this inscription dates to about 150 years after King David would have lived. But you can see right over here, 150 years after King David would have lived, attributed to a man named King Hazel of Aram. Aram is modern day Syria. And this King Hazel is also mentioned in the Bible in the second book of Kings. And this King Hazel was in a good mood. How do we know? The inscription tells us that he had just won a major military victory over who? over a king from the house of David. Now, if there's a house of David, what does that mean? That David existed. There's a David, right? That if there's a house of David, that means that there was a King David, right? And so today, everyone knows that of course there's a David, right? Now, I have a story similar to yours where before co years ago, I was guiding a group of academics in the city of David. I said to this group of academics, I said, "You know what's interesting? 30 years ago, what was the debate surrounding David? Whether he existed or not. Exactly. Whether he existed or not. Today, what are we debating? How large his kingdom was? Every day that passes, we are unearthing antiquities in the city of David and throughout the country that are showing not simply as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact, that Jerusalem's biblical heritage is true. You could see it, you could touch it, you could walk on it. that as more and more time passes, there are fewer and fewer questions about the authenticity of the biblical account of what happened in Jerusalem going back 3,000 years and certainly uh much more closer and closer throughout the biblical period. I want to get into a discussion as to first of all who is denying the existence of of King David uh and by that the Bible uh and also why and what's the motivation. But just before we get into this, just so nobody who is viewing this has any doubt that King David actually existed, is there anything else that we need to know that you guys have proof that this is not just a biblical narrative, but actually his there is additional historical proof that he actually lived. Well, the amazing thing about the excavations taking place in the city of David is we are uncovering literally on a daily basis. We are finding seals with the names of figures that appear in the Bible. We are finding ancient inscriptions that are affirming events that are recounted in the Bible. And so, you can go back 2500 years, 2,700 years, maybe 3,000 years and say, "Okay, here's what the archaeology, the science is showing. Here's what it says in the Bible. And we are seeing more and more examples where it matches. Now, it's not my job to prove the Bible. Uh if someone believes in the Bible, great. And if they don't, it's not my job to convince them, well, here's the archaeology and therefore you should believe. Uh but what is amazing is that as archaeologists are digging just recently uh in an excavation in the city of David, a different excavation than the one we were just talking about, they uncovered a seal going back about 2600 years. The name on the seal is Nathan Melik, servant of the king. Right now, Nathan Melik, servant of the king. Okay, it's a strange name to find on a seal. It turns out that this Nathan Melik appears in 2 Kings 23:11. Now, the archaeologists who dig in these excavations, they come from Tel Aviv University, other places. Generally, not what you'd call religious people and they're very careful. They don't want to say, "Well, this is matches up with what the Bible says." They want to be very cautious and they found this seal. And just last week, two weeks ago, I was having a conversation with this archaeologist and he had the seal and he was showing it to someone. And I said, I said, "Well, is this the same person that's mentioned in the Bible?" And he basically said, he says, "You know what? I can't tell you 100% but it it is almost certainly so meaning for him he could say 99.9%. Right? But here it is and the amazing thing is is that archaeologists are not religious which is great because if you had religious people digging be like oh you're biased and and whatever but when you have people who they would consider themselves not religious maybe secular or whatever they'd call themselves and they're the ones unearthing these treasures and saying wait a second it matches up with the biblical account. That's powerful. Now you say well why would people deny that right? Why is that threatening to people? Uh but sadly uh you have today among other places at the United Nations you have a body called UNESCO the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. Now sounds like a very important body. They have a very important mandate which is to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity. That sounds really important. Now Jerusalem probably more so than any other place on the planet has a lot of that. a lot of heritage that's important to a lot of people that needs to be preserved, cherished, protected. So, you would think that UNESCO would love what we're doing in the city of David. Except uh they don't. So, in 2016, they pass a resolution saying that Jerusalem is in fact significant, just not to Jews and not to Christians. That places like the Temple Mount and the Western Wall are significant only to one group, not the Mormons either, right? It's to Islam. Now, I'm not here to minimize the connection that Muslims feel to Jerusalem, but you're going to say that that Jews and Christians don't have a connection to the Temple Mount, to the Western Wall. Really? Uh the site where the two temples stood? Uh how can you say that Jews and Christians don't have a connection to this place? And when they go on to condemn the archaeological excavations taking place in Jerusalem, of course, the largest being the city of David. What does that mean, condemn? Do they not want you guys to excavate? There's a phrase that I love, the truth is not insecure. Right? And so if they believe that they know the truth about who lived there and what happened there and all this historical evidence, wouldn't they want to encourage you guys digging and and and showing essentially whatever happened there? You would think that, but that's not the case. And I'm going to show you something in a moment that highlights how much has changed uh in recent times. So they they have this resolution. Condemn the archaeology, condemn the excavations, deny the heritage that Jews and Christians share to Jerusalem. Under what grounds are they asking you not to excavate? Well, the United Nations sadly uh is not the arbiter of morality or truth. Uh and the way it works in the United Nations is when people vote on resolutions like this uh they're not voting based on what's historically accurate or true. They're voting on what serves their country's interests. And in fact, uh in 2016, Mexico's ambassador to UNESCO, uh he reaches out to his uh foreign office in advance of this upcoming vote and he says, "Well, here's this vote coming up on Jerusalem. what are my instructions? How am I supposed to vote? Now, Mexico is a very Christian. It's a Catholic country. And they say to him, to his surprise, uh, we're going to support this resolution denying Jerusalem's biblical heritage. And so, he says, "Well, what do you mean? I don't understand. How can we support a resolution that denies our own heritage, not because it's denying Israel's heritage or the Jewish people's heritage. This is our heritage, a Christian country. What do you mean we're going to support this resolution?" And they said, "No, we're going to support the resolution." He says, "But it's not true, but we're going to support the resolution." The vote came. He did not follow the orders that he was given. And you know what he was doing the next day? Looking for a job. Wow. Right. And all the other ambassadors, they see that and they're like, "You know what? We like being ambassadors. We like getting a nice apartment in New York City and having a driver and all the perks of being an ambassador. We're not going to lose our position over standing up for the truth." Right. And so you have these resolutions that is the reason that they're pushing so hard against the excavation and the support of, you know, the Bible and the existence of King David and all the evidence is the reason because it doesn't fit a certain current political narrative that they they want to push. Well, it's not just political, but it's also a spiritual narrative that if the story that you're telling uh is that Jews and by extension Christians uh have no heritage in Jerusalem, that we're foreigners, we're colonizers, we're occupiers, we were never here, then you'll hate a place like the city of David, right? Because there is no place on the planet that shows more clearly, not that the Bible is real, that it's real, that you could see it, you could touch it. Right? Here it is. We've been here for thousands of years. You could like that or you can not like it. It's what you can call an inconvenient truth. Right. Right. And certainly if you want to say that uh from first a spiritual perspective, from an Islamic perspective, if you want to say, "Well, wait a second. You know, Islam is the dominant religion and and Jews were never here. It's only Islam, right?" Well, then you're not going to like what we're finding in the city of David, which is a lot of uh affirmation of the Jew of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem going back thousands of years. Politically speaking, uh the city of David, like the western wall, like the temple mount, like the via delar roa and the church of the holy supplr and the mount of olives and the garden of Gethsemane is located in what much of the world refers to as East Jerusalem. Now, what much the world says about East Jerusalem is, well, that should be Palestine. Uh Jews were never there. They're occupying it, right? Israel's occupying it. What's the problem? When you find in the city of David every single day antiquities, fancy word for old stuff, showing that we've actually been there for thousands of years, that Jerusalem's biblical heritage is in fact true. Well, then you have to say, well, wait a second. Well, then maybe they're not occupiers. Maybe they're not colonizers. Maybe they're not foreigners. Maybe they actually do have heritage in this place. That does not fit the script. Right now, if you go back to 1930, you have a body in 1930 called the Supreme Muslim Council. Now, you see here 1930, the Supreme Muslim Council puts out in English a brief guide to the Al Haram al- Sharif referring to the Temple Mount. Now, this is in English because 1930, the British are in the country, right? What does the Supreme Muslim Council want the British personnel to know about the Temple Mount in 1930? Well, you can see here it says its identity with the site of Solomon's temple is beyond dispute. This too is the spot according to universal belief on which quote David built an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. They're quoting from the Bible. So 1930, the Supreme Muslim Council says there was a David, there was a Solomon, there was a temple. Beyond dispute, universal belief they quote the Bible. Now, a lot of times gone by since 1930, so we have a more up-to-date version of this booklet, Alaka Mosque, clarifications for misconceptions. Well, what are the misconceptions? Maybe you read the earlier version. And you might actually believe that Jews and by extension Christians have heritage in Jerusalem. So, they going to clarify that very quickly. So, you have over here the Dome of the Rock and not the Holy of Holies, the Alburak Wall and not the Wailing Wall, the Alaka Mosque and not the temple. what was less than a century ago beyond dispute universal belief erasing history. That's right. It brings me back to that moment where we connected and I asked you how is it that in Tel Aviv, an hour and a half away from the excavations of City of David where there was proof that there was a Jewish homeland in the area way before 1948. How is it that the academics are teaching otherwise? And you look back at me and you said, "Isn't that what you guys is happening to you in your country in the United States where history is being erased and therefore replaced?" And at the core of all of it is the big government and the academia working together to essentially create a new narrative in order to basically feed people a new ideology that is, you know, pretty much made up. Right. That's right. And so what is the work that you guys are doing to educate I guess the world about you know the city and what kind of obstacles are you all facing? Well the first challenge is that up until 150 years ago when people thought where is the original biblical city of Jerusalem the city synonymous with people like King David, King Solomon, prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah everyone was looking for Jerusalem in the wrong place. that if you would ask most people, well, where is biblical Jerusalem? Or close your eyes and when you see biblical Jerusalem, what is it that you see? The wailing walling wall, they'll say maybe the the stations of the cross, the church of the holy supplr. And the amazing thing is when people say that that's what they think of when they think of biblical Jerusalem, none of those places are in the Bible, right? At least not in the original Hebrew Bible. The Western Wall, the Wailing Wall is a thousand years after David, right? People think the old city of Jerusalem is biblical Jerusalem until 1867. 1867, Queen Victoria of England wants to discover the treasures of the Bible like the Ark of the Covenant. Right? So here you can see over here when people think of Jerusalem and all the places that make Jerusalem Jerusalem for billions of people, you have over here the Temple Mount. This is the biblical Mount Mariah. Today you have the Islamic shrines on top of it. You have the Western Wall right over here. So this was all built, this area was built many years after the city of David was was built. So what you have the western wall, the temple mount that we have today goes back about 2,000 years ago to the time of Herod to the time of Jesus. That's the time period that we're talking about. King David is a thousand years before that. Now the walls that surround the old city today, right, they are Ottoman walls. They go back 500 years. Mhm. Now, if you're talking about the United States of America, 500 years is a long time ago. Jerusalem, which is 4,000 years old. We don't get overly excited by 500y old anything. Right now, 1867, Queen Victoria of England wants to discover the treasures of the Bible, like the Ark of the Covenant. She sends a man by the name of Captain Charles Warren to the Holy Land to find those treasures. He comes to Jerusalem. He comes to the Temple Mount, right? This is where he wants to search for the treasures of the Bible. except 1867. The Ottomans, the Muslims are here and they say, "Charles, we're sure you're our great guy, but you're not going to dig up the Temple Mount." Today, due to religious sensitivities, political sensitivities, there's been no archaeological excavations on the Temple Mount. So Charles Warren says, "If I can't excavate on the Temple Mount, I'll excavate near it." He comes down the slopes of the Temple Mount of Mount Mariah, walks through the Kidron Valley over here. He ends up making a discovery which will lead him to come up with a theory which is that the original biblical city of Jerusalem, the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began is not located inside the walls of the old city but located outside. That was like a blessing in disguise. You would have thought that maybe God guided him in that way, right? In Jerusalem that happens a lot, right? So he comes up with this theory and when he announces his theory to the world, everyone says you're crazy. Why? Because if you say that today this 11acre ridge, this is the city of David today. The place where Jerusalem began, Temple Mount, right to the north, here's the Western Wall. Here's a city of David. Here's what it looks like 100 years ago. Mhm. There's nothing there. Right. And it's only over the last century plus of archaeological excavations that have taken place on this ridge here in the city of David that today everyone knows that Charles Warren was in fact correct. that the original biblical city of Jerusalem, the city of David, which today is one of the most archaeologically excavated sites in the world, everyone knows today that it's actually outside the walls of the old city. We lost Jerusalem. So, one of the first obstacles is people need to understand the old city of Jerusalem is uptown Jerusalem. It's old, but it's not the oldest part of Jerusalem. The place where the kings of the Bible ruled and the prophets of the Bible preached was not the old city, but the city of David. I mean, it's really right around the corner. I remember walking from there. Before we go into talking about the significance of uh the excavations in the city, can you just explain to me briefly the difference between where we go to the whailing wall and why we go there and where we go to see the city of David and and just what is the significance of both because there's quite a lot of significance in the wailing wall. I don't want to under uh estimate that portion. So the wailing wall is uh one of the retaining walls of the temple mount that goes back to the time of Herod again around the time of Jesus, right? 2,000 years ago. And it is essentially the snapshot that we have of the destruction of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago uh of what's left. And it's become a pilgrimage site for people to go and pray. It's called the Wailing Wall because it's a place where people go to mourn the destruction of Jerusalem. Uh it's essentially very similar to Yadvashm uh in Israel, which is the Holocaust memorial, which essentially the Wailing Wall is commemorating the destruction from 2,000 years ago. Yadvashm is commemorating the destruction of Jewish life in Europe from 70 years ago. But it's a very similar theme, destruction, mourning, commemoration. The city of David is not that. The city of David 1 is far older than the Wailing Wall. I mean, you're talking about uh its origin some 2,000 years before the Wailing Wall. Uh David is a thousand years before the wailing wall. Uh but the city of David was life in Jerusalem. It was during the time of the Bible again where the kings of the Bible are ruling from where the prophets of the Bible are preaching from. Anything that's happening in Jerusalem in the Bible is largely happening in either the city of David or the temple mount. And therefore when you want to connect to Jerusalem and it's her biblical heritage that's the city of David. I mean, when you think of the people like King David, King Solomon, King Hezekiah, prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, they're walking through the streets of the city of David, uh, when Nehemiah rebuilds the walls around Jerusalem, which we found in the city of David, those same walls. He was building those walls around the city of David. You see that when you're in the place where the Bible happened, the words of the Bible come to life. And it's not just stories. You can actually see it. Yeah. I mean, you can touch it, right? You can touch it. you you find these these antiquities that are being on earth that are showing they were real people who marched through the pages of the Bible, real events just as they were described in the Bible. And again, for some people that's a spiritual thing. Uh for other people it's a historical thing. But what I think many people don't realize is that the values that this country, the United States of America, the values that this country is built upon, the Judeo-Christian heritage, where does that come from? Yeah. Comes from Jerusalem. I mean, so many of the laws that America has put into uh into effect come from Deuteronomy. That's right. Right. The founding fathers when they were creating this great nation, they were inspired by Jerusalem. And therefore, the city of David is not just a Jewish heritage site. It's not just an Israeli heritage site, but in in many ways, it's an American heritage site. Yeah. And that's why the last uh administration, they actually recognized we have this at the entrance to the city of David. This this plaque which acknowledges the significance to the United States of America that the city of David plays as a heritage site for America because the values the heritage that America is built upon, right, has its roots in the city of David. And what we're trying to do in these excavations is to protect and to preserve and make accessible to people of all faiths and backgrounds this heritage which has shaped the world. not for millions but for billions of people. And that relevance of those values and that heritage is not less today than it was two and three thousand years ago. In fact, it's probably never been more relevant when we look at some of the challenges that are going on in the United States of America, also in Israel. It's a guidepost for how we can navigate some of those challenges. Well, the evidence is so important, right? Because being able to actually physically show our children and people around the world that there's actual evidence that they can touch, they can see, uh they can interact with, I mean, truth is on our side, as I said. But, you know, we're we're working against uh an environment that is doing everything they can to deny the existence of the Bible because, you know, they they don't want religion. They want government to take over the religion. A few years ago, you had an incredible discovery. You found a road. Uh can we talk a little bit about this special road and why it's significant? Uh I I think what's very cool about this road is that you know it's very very possible or maybe have been proven that Jesus has actually walked on this road. Uh and so tell me a little bit about that one. So 2004 at the southern end of the city of David there's a road and over here beneath the road there was a sewage pipe and in 2004 the sewage pipe explodes and now you have a big mess. So Jerusalem is not just another municipality. The city of David is not just another part of Jerusalem. And here when a sewage pipe bursts, you don't only send in construction crews, you also send in archaeologists. And so the archaeologists, they're supervising, they begin to hear scraping and scratching. The bulldozers are doing their thing. They clear everyone out. And it turns out in repairing the sewage pipe, they inadvertently discover these ancient stone steps 2,000 years old. And the archaeologists say there's only one other set of steps that look just like these in Jerusalem. These are the southern steps. The steps that would have gone up to the temple 2,000 years ago. And the archaeologist said, "Well, okay, we know what these steps are now, but what are the steps down here?" They realized they had found the steps leading down to the ancient pool of Saleom. Now, the pool of Salem has deep significance in the Christian scriptures. The Bible tells us that three times a year all of Israel has to go on pilgrimage up to the temple on the temple mount. Now, before you can go up to the temple, what do you have to do? You have to wash, cleanse, bathe, purify yourself. The pool of Silom, the southern end of the city of David, is the size of two Olympic size swimming pools. Why so big? The historian Josephus said that 2,000 years ago, you would have had nearly 3 million people. Incredible, right? Not like 10,000, not 50,000, 3 million people going on pilgrimage from the pool all the way up to the temple on the temple mount. So now the question the archaeologists had was, okay, we know where the pool of Saleom is at the southern end of the city of David. We know where the temple stood on the temple mount a half mile north of there. How did all those millions of pilgrims get from the pool all the way up to the temple mount? So they widen the excavation and what do they find? They find what today is known as the pilgrimage road. M this is the road our ancestors, yours and mine, Jews and Christians alike, 2,000 years ago, this is the road that they walked upon when they went on pilgrimage up from the pool all the way up to the temple. Now keep in mind 2,000 years ago it's under the sky. Today it's underground. You have a neighborhood above, but 2,000 years ago it's under the sky. And as you go up, you see alongside the road shops and stalls that you're going up to the temple. Maybe you need something for the temple offering. You have all the shops and you also have this the only one of its kind found so far in Jerusalem. It's found along the pilgrimage road. This is the ancient place where you would have had your Prageru videos, right? This is the ancient soapbox. If you had a message 2,000 years ago, you're going to get up on the podium. It's the public forum. Yes. to hide Park Speakers Corner and you're going to preach and you'll say a spiritual message, an ethical message, a political message, an educational message. This is where you're going to do it and if you're interesting, people will stop and listen. And if not, someone else will get up and give it a go. But this was the town square. This was the beating heart of Jerusalem. I call it the biblical superighway. Anywhere you wanted to go 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem, this road's taking you there. Now, the road itself is about five times wider than what you see here. Right now, archaeologists are doing a north south connection between the pool all the way up to the footsteps of the western wall. And once we finish that, there'll be an east- west expansion, but this is literally going to allow people to walk in the footsteps of the Bible, see it with their own eyes, touch it with their own hands, walk with their own feet on the very same road where their ancestors walked thousands of years ago. So, I was never that much into archaeology. I've become more interested in it now because when you know that people are denying history, we got to show proof, right? What kind of obstacles are you guys facing? I mean, I I've been reading about the fact that they're not letting you guys dig and and excavate more. And why is that? And and who is stopping you actually right now from digging? Is it a financial issue or is it a political issue? Are you able to dig further under these towns and possibly find more of these incredible pieces of history? So, one of the biggest challenges when it comes to the city of David is if you think of Gettysburg today, how many people live on the Gettysburg battlefield? Nobody, right? Why would you have someone living on one of the most significant heritage sites in America? Yeah. The city of David today is a modern neighborhood. It's a mixed Jewish Arab neighborhood, right? And it's sitting at top one of the most significant heritage sites on the planet, not just for millions of people, but for billions of people. Now, if this was the United States, what would you do? Eminent domain. You'd say, "Here's some money. Everyone moving out." Nobody wants to move out of Jerusalem. It's not that nobody wants to move out. We obviously understand why people, whether you're Jewish, Christian, Muslim, why if you were living in the city of David, you wouldn't want to live anywhere else ever. It's it's biblical Jerusalem. At the same time, there's political sensitivities and religious sensitivities and cultural sensitivities. So, there's no eminent domain in Jerusalem. So one of the big challenges is how do you on the one hand respect the modern the people who live in the neighborhood today in the the modern day city of David whereas at the same time uncover the heritage that has so much significance not to millions but to billions of people around the world and the answer is with great sensitivity. Uh the city of David's only 11 acres. I mean, you have places in Texas, driveways that are bigger than 11 acres. Uh but we've only excavated a third of the site so far because of those sensitivities. And so everything has to be done slowly, carefully. It has to be done right. And better to do it right and in the right way. And it takes a little bit longer than to to rush through it and have all the complications that would go along with that. So there are political sensitivities that you always have to keep in mind. But thankfully all the excavations that take place in the city of David are with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the body that oversees for the state of Israel all the archaeological excavations carried out with the archaeologists from all the leading academic institutions. So this is not a, you know, in the middle of the night digging. This is as legitimate as you're going to get. Uh but of course one of the challenges always is archaeology is expensive, right? Uh and so to excavate something like the pilgrimage road you're talking about with all the engineering hundreds of millions of dollars right uh and so thankfully you know the state of Israel partners with uh some of the work and there are lots of people around the world who see the importance of uncovering this heritage and they're also our partners in in uh in these excavations but it's it's certainly important to also understand that whether it's the Palestinian leadership the European Union leadership the United Nations leadership They don't like these excavations. They would love it uh if these excavations literally uh were just buried buried under. Now, people could disagree when it comes to politics and policy. But what should not be up for debate is the heritage of Jerusalem, the biblical heritage of Jerusalem, which is the city of David, which there is probably no place on the planet where you can more clearly link a people with a place going back thousands of years than the Jewish people to Jerusalem. That's a fact. You could like it, you can not like it. I think it was the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moyahan who said that you're entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts. And uh that's the problem when it comes to uh what's happening in Jerusalem, what's happening in the city of David is that you have people in the Palestinian leadership, European Union leadership, United Nations leadership that actually believe no uh we're actually entitled to our own facts and if we pass enough resolutions and make enough speeches uh and have enough uh European Union NOS's uh writing these reports saying these things that people will believe it and use the academics and hide history and and basically propagate the idea that Israel became a Jewish homeland only in 1948 and not, you know, thousands and thousands of years before. Now, here's something. We're talking about the pilgrimage road. I want to show you something that it's it's for Jerus by Jerusalem standards is relatively modern, right? This is only 2,000 years old, right? This is what's known as a silver half shekel coin. Now, 2,000 years ago, the Bible tells us that there was something known as the temple tax. Once a year you had to bring whether you were rich or poor the same amount which was a silver half shekele coin. So you can take a look at this. That's 2,000 years old. That's actual real silver found along the pilgrimage road. Someone was on their way up to the temple carrying the temple tax. They had a hole in their pocket. A flat tax. A flat tax. Exactly. Right. Rich, poor, they all paid the same. Everyone had an equal share. Everybody had a stake in the in the temple in Jerusalem. Right. Now, an ancient Hebrew script that's on that coin, it has the words Holy Jerusalem in Hebrew 2,000 years ago. Proof, right? This is, call it proof, call it an affirmation. We have been here, right? This is not because I believe it or you believe it or because I'm religious. It's not simply a matter of faith, but a matter of fact. It's real. You're holding something literally out of the pages of the Bible. It looks so similar to the current day she too. What else do you have? Show me more things. This is a coin that 2,000 years ago, the Romans are destroying Jerusalem. The year 70, they'll destroy Jerusalem. And in the years leading up to the destruction, there's a period known as the Great Revolt, the great Jewish revolt for freedom against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. Now, this coin, it's it's a bit of a mystery. Why are they m minting these coins? Because everyone knew at that time Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. So, this is not currency. This is just a coin. This a statement. The people who minted these coins, they knew Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. That coin that you're holding represented a hope, a wish, a dream, and a prayer that one day their descendants would return to Jerusalem as sovereign. Now, it took a little bit longer than they thought it would, but 2,000 years later, here we are, and there is still a Jerusalem, capital of the Jewish state of Israel, open to people of all faiths and backgrounds. that hope, that wish, that dream, and that prayer was answered. So what what script is this? What language is this? That is ancient Hebrew script, right? That is what Hebrew used to look like. It was an ideological statement saying, "We're going back to our roots." It echoed throughout the generations. If you think of the call that the Jewish people have had for millennia, next year in Jerusalem, even in our darkest moments, we never stop saying that. Yeah. And today, there is a Jerusalem, an open, free, accessible Jerusalem to people of all faiths and backgrounds. And here's something else amazing. When you think of some of the great wonders of the world, you go see the pyramids, you say, "Wow, look at the grandeur of the pharaohs, you go to the coliseum, look at the might of the great Roman Empire." But then you say, "Where are the pharaohs today? Where is the great Roman Empire today?" And the answer is the same. Museums, history books with some monuments left behind. You come to the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began. You walk in a few years time along the pilgrimage road. It's real. You could see it. You could touch it and we're bringing it back to life. Yeah. For the benefit of not just the Jewish people, not just Israel, but for billions of people around the world who whether out of a spirituality, out of faith, out of a connection to history or culture or just wanting to connect to something that's bigger than ourselves. That's what Jerusalem is. That's what the city of David is. And that's also why there's a fight over it. Because the truth is, and you know this from your work, anything that's really important, there's a fight over it. And if no one's fighting you, it means it's not that important. Once this excavation of the pilgrimage road is complete, you're going to have millions and millions of people every year who are going to literally walk in the footsteps of the Bible. And then they'll be able to say, whether it's to the United Nations or to Palestinian leadership or others, you're lying. Yeah. Right. That there is a truth, right? The Jewish people have been in Jerusalem for thousands of years. And by extension, so have Christians. Jerusalem's biblical heritage is true. It's real. You could see it. You could touch it. You could walk on it. And that's what's happening in the city of David as we speak. Uh, and that's exciting a lot of people, scaring a lot of others. Uh, but the best days are yet to come. I I think what's so inspiring about this particular coin is the message that it sends that we really do need to preserve history and we need to write, you know, we need to write our diaries and we need to commemorate important ideas because somebody is going to come after us and going to try to erase it. And if we don't safeguard these pieces of evidence, then we're going to give another group of people the opportunity to just lie and tell a new narrative and and and essentially control people's minds. And we're seeing that. And it's these little gifts that we're finding that are reminding us how important it is that we have the courage. Um, and also the foresight that these folks had to know that one day, even if it's thousands and thousands of years later, somebody's going to need to find this coin to know that the fight and the and the work that needs to go into preserving history is worth it. That's right. Right. It is a fight in the sense that you have one side that is actively denying that heritage, the heritage that Israel is built upon, that the United States of America is built upon. And if we just assume, well, everyone knows that there was a King David. Everyone knows that uh, you know, Jerusalem has its heritage going back thousands of years. You can't take anything for granted. You can't take the truth for granted. The truth needs us to protect it. That's right. And so one of the beautiful things that that's happening in the city of David is it's unearthing that that those affirmations that evidence. I wish everybody could go and see. I know sadly not everybody can get on a plane and fly to Israel. What what else do you have? You have one more box here. Tell me about that one. So this was uh a bit of a message of hope that in the year 70 when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, they are so proud of their victory over Jerusalem that they meant a coin to get more proof that Jerusalem existed. They they had to ruin it. Obviously it existed. I mean so the Romans you could see here is the Roman Emperor Vespasian and on the coin it says Judea capta, right? Judea has been captured. The reason why Jews are called Jews, Jews come from Judea. The capital of Judea was Jerusalem. On the coin, you have a Roman legionnaire towering above a Jewish woman on her knees crying. This is the most widely minted victory coin the Romans ever minted. If one goes to Rome, you have the arch of Titus. Titus would go on to become emperor of Rome. But before he's emperor of Rome, he's the commander of the 10th Roman Legion, which destroys Jerusalem. On the arch, you have the temple treasures being led out of Jerusalem and into Rome. Now, in 1958, 10 years after Israel's reestablishment, Israel mints its first national medallion. But there's something strange about this. If you look closely, you'll see here they've recreated the Roman victory coin, which is strange. Why would you remint a symbol of shame for your people? But when you turn it over, you see the answer because now it says Israel libera, right? A woman holding a baby, right? Woman's standing tall, holding a baby in her arms. The Roman soldier is gone. and a man is beside her working the land, making the desert bloom. That was Israel's response to Rome. 2,000 years in the making. And again, it took long, right? It took a long time, right? 2,000 years is a long time to wait. But some things fighting for, right? And Jerusalem, I believe, is one of those things. I think our shared heritage that comes from Jerusalem that has shaped both of our great nations is something worth fighting for. Uh and certainly there's a fight today. Yeah. Uh and only question is, you know, do we want to stand up for what we believe in? Do we want to make sure that this heritage is preserved and protected uh and shared with the next generation so that they they too will be able to have a heritage that's worth passing on to the future? Yeah, I feel so much the same way about America, right? It's it's so exhausting in in my position to keep fighting and feel like you know the academia is against us and the culture is against us and cancel culture is against us and you know people will write all these articles about you know Dennis Prager or any of us uh that are trying to preserve American history and you know you look at these things and you say wow if King David's descendants fought then certainly America is worth fighting for too and how important it is that we preserve America's history because you know that's what the other side wants to do. They want to overwhelm us. We just need to keep at it. That's right. Chin up. You know, 2,000 years ago, you have to put a wager down. Who has a brighter future? Rome or Jerusalem? Mhm. Right. Everyone would have taken Rome, right? Yeah. Unless you believed in the Bible and you you walked with God and then you knew. And even then, if you look at the various empires that have come through Jerusalem, whether it's the Babylonians or the Persians or the Greeks or the Romans at their peak, they were the biggest deal. And it just didn't seem like like small little Jerusalem, small little Israel, small little David against Goliath would stand a chance, right? But here we are. We're we're standing for something important. whether it's here in the United States, in Jerusalem, the heritage, the values, they're worth fighting for. Yeah. And what's interesting is in this particular excavation that we're talking about along the pilgrimage road where those coins are being found, we also find something else that is found throughout the excavation. And if you take a look over here, take a look at this. You can see here, what is that? It's like a ash. That is ash that dates back in this time capsule, in this layer to 2,000 years ago. That is ash from the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70. There it is. I mean, it's in that layer in that time capsule from the same fires that destroyed Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. And you're holding it in your hand and we're going to share it with millions and millions of people. Well, thanks for bringing all this stuff. This is so cool. It's like my dirty jobs, right? doesn't show and tell doesn't just have to be in kindergarten. Yeah. No, I love it. I love that it's like real and it's uh and it's proof and I get to interact with it. So, thanks. Hopefully those values and that heritage uh for those who still want to connect to it, it will be a source of strength and blessing to overcome these challenging and dark times uh and ultimately will be a source of light for us and uh for our children. Incredible. Well, I am so inspired. Thank you, Zeb. Um you know, I really needed this. So, thanks for this conversation and I hope all of you who are listening are inspired and uh go visit go visit the city of David if you can. Thanks again.