Exodus Discovering The True Mount Sinai Full Extended Episode

Saudi Arabia, not the place most people imagine when they hear Mount Sinai. For centuries, tradition pointed toward the windswept peaks of the Egyptian peninsula. But what if the real story has been hidden, just out of sight across the Gulf of Aqaba? Modern explorers and ancient scholars alike have begun to peel back the layers of history. This is the land of Midian, where Moses fled from Pharaoh, where he married into Jethro's family, and where, according to the earliest biblical accounts, he encountered the burning bush. It was here pioneering figures like Ron Wyatt braved closed borders and real danger in the 1980s. Three Americans came home Monday night. Ronald Wyatt and his sons landed in a Saudi Arabian jail. They entered Saudi Arabia illegally, searching for the site of the biblical Mount Sinai. Wyatt's journeys at great personal cost helped shine a global spotlight on these hidden valleys and sparked a new wave of research and adventure. Today, his effort is remembered as a turning point. For decades, Saudi Arabia was a guarded, secretive kingdom. Visiting any biblical site was nearly impossible. Closed off, with little chance for outsiders to see what lay beneath these sands. But in just the last few years, everything has changed. Ancient towns like Al-Ula now share space with futuristic projects and bustling tourist corridors. Our mission? Trace the very route of the exodus, site by site. We'll stand at the shores of the Red Sea near the Gulf of Aqaba, looking toward Egypt and imagining the parting of a sea. Ahead are the split rock of Horeb, the Golden Calf Altar with its haunting Egyptian petroglyphs, and then the hard ascent to the Altar of Moses, Elijah's Cave, the Plateau of the Elders, and finally, the thunder-scorched summit of Mount Sinai itself. These places are more than stones. They are the fingerprints of a journey that changed the world. For us, this is not just a search for sites. It's an expedition into the archaeology, the story, and the soul of the exodus. A new chapter is unfolding. One where ancient faith meets modern discovery. The journey is real. The evidence ready to be seen. And the road, at last, is open. There it is. That is incredible. Coming right up on it. Gonna come right underneath it. Look how big that is. Hey, you can kind of see the areas where it, like, cascaded down. Yeah. You know what I mean? Literally looks like water just came right down there. Wow. To see all these sites here is amazing. Oh, that's gonna be awesome to go up to. The people quarreled with Moses and said, Give us water to drink. Then the Lord said to Moses, Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink. That is huge. I mean, from the bottom, it seemed like there's no way you could go in between it. But the closer you get, it's like, Oh, it's a massive amount of room going in between where the rock split is. Wow. Just kind of following the waterfall trail. One of the things for us is like when you come to these places, we've, you know, traveled to many holy places around the world. And, you know, from Israel to John, his cave in Patmos. And when you're there, one of the things that I do, at least, is I always imagine like what it would have been like right there, right during that time. You know, the heat that they would have been feeling. All the things of nature, like all the senses come alive when you're reading it. You know, you can imagine and you imagine in your mind. But then when you're actually here, you can like, you know, you can feel the heat. You can, you know, you can hear the sounds of the desert. And what it must have been like, you know, when they were complaining to Moses that they had no water, saying, Have you brought us out into the desert to die of thirst? Because they've just come from the oasis. And now you're, you're here. And then the rock is struck and pours out this water. So you're seeing miracle after miracle. It's just incredible. You just think about how it would have been, you know, when, boom, that happened. Here it is. So this is right at the spot. You can really see the cut right through it. I mean, it just towers above you where the crack actually goes. You can see it just way up there. Struck it, bang. Just made our way through the crack here. Just look at the size of it. I mean, this is over an arm length. There's a little like kind of trailway that goes through. You really kind of also see how the water, you know, pours down. It's very evident on the front. This is like, you also see kind of stream patterns going all the way down from the side as well, too. Almost like a little cleft there. I mean, it's, it's something to see. And it just stands like over this whole valley. Thousands of years ago. Incredible. That's the, that's the altar built in dedication to the victory over the Amalekites. You can see it really good from up here. Heading to the altars. And which can still be seen. And you can see the rocks stacked up along here, which is really close. You can see the, the split rock behind us. And then these are the altars to honor God for the win over the Amalekites. Where Moses was on the side of the hill watching the battle. And as his arms were raised, the Israelites prevailed. But whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses's hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him. And he sat on it. Aaron and her held his hands up. One on one side, one on the other. So that his hands remained steady until sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword. And Moses built an altar and called it the Lord is my banner. He said, because hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord. Wow. That's incredible. What is this? Channel? It's like a channel for a waterway. But I mean, you can clearly see it. Yeah. And this would have just been flowing water all the way out of here. And then to reverse. Yeah. And take a look here. You can see the rock. Now you're coming through here. That's incredible. That's totally. That's just so obvious is the water. Looks like water just spilling out of it. Yeah, all the way up. Wow. This is incredible. How would you have billions of people have to be? Wow. Look at that valley. Yeah. Here, look at this. You see that riverbed drains all the way out and then look down there. You see that? Yeah. You see that? And then it goes flows right on through that whole valley. And that would have just been filled with the Israelites. And so that is up there, which I'm pointing to is the Neom ski resort. Believe it or not, the ski resort that they're trying to put in there, they're going to have to just put in tons of artificial snow because it's a very inhospitable climate here for winter sports. Freight there right next to it. Look at down the mountain here is the split rock of Horeb. So it's like really close. And hence the reason why you're seeing all this traffic coming in. You see like big rigs, construction camps, pretty much surrounding this whole area. You kind of find that at all these sites throughout Saudi Arabia. There's these huge projects that are undertaking. They're undertaking the line, which is this massive mirrored complex. Now they have the ski resort. They have different places that they're doing here. So, you know, no matter where you're kind of going in this region, you're encountering some massive construction. It's definitely like some of the last years that you'll be able to see this where it's still in kind of his natural setting. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, come make us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him. Aaron answered them, take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing and bring them to me. So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, these are your gods, oh Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. We're right at the site of the golden calf. And you would have seen where the altar was. And we're going to take a look at these petroglyphs around here. And one of the things is, as you can see on this side here, where you're seeing it, where people are dancing, really well preserved. Look here, okay. So you're starting to see the first imagery of things. And then in here, look at this. Look at how nicely defined those are. And then even this here, you can see there's probably trying to do some sort of preservation technique or take a cast of it. But you can see this done in the fashion of a bull right along there. I mean, look at this. You actually see more as you get closer. You see the detail, how this one's kind of fainted right there. It's like almost to the side. And you see this here, there's another one. They're everywhere. They're in like nooks and crannies. They're underneath. You know, you can't even see all of them unless you come really close. And then you can see up there. And up there would have been the top altar. If you go up there and look and you can see another one. Look at these two opposite here. You have one right here. Look at how defined that is. You can see one down below it as well too, one there. So these are like painted all along here. You see them here. So there's so much archaeological evidence here that there was something very significant happening with bulls. The amount of detail that's on these rocks and the paintings on these rocks. It's not like, oh, you know, I have to really struggle to see. It's like you really, really can see it. It's very plain and they're all over. The whole side of it is just golden cat, golden cat, golden cat. And there's like, you'll see him on the top. You'll see him. I know, look at right up there. I know, they're everywhere. It's like right, right there. Those two. I mean, yeah, it's just amazing. And then you look up over here and the darkened area up there is where Mount Sinai is. Three interesting things you can see right from this perspective here. You can see first the altar for the golden calf right in front of us here. Then you look upwards towards this first mountain and there is one small cave is the cave of Elijah. And then right above that, you can see the blackened peaks there. That's the part where the cloud would have come down and Moses would have went up and met with God and brought down the commandments. Right there. Take a look here. We're going up to this one. Look at that. There's one up here, right here. That's the backside of the bull. Then there would have been something over here. One of the possibilities as well, too, is that the golden calf is you would have all these different altars. And as you see different religions around the world, they'll oftentimes take idols and they'll move them from like station to station. So they might have had all these different altars that were dressed up with it and then moving the golden calf and moving it from altar to altar to altar. Look at this. This is all just people dancing. Petroglyph here. Obviously a recurring theme here. Either people dancing, bulls all around this whole valley area. Now we're coming up here towards the mountain. You can see right behind me there. Large rock face and then all just bulls with the horns. This is probably one of the more better quality ones. Yeah. Like this one in itself. If you see in Egypt, it's same exact way. You see the people underneath the calf and they're like worshiping it. You always see like groups of people before you've seen that. Time and time with the Egyptian right here. Have somebody underneath. The Saudi officials have been asked, have you seen any of these other type of petroglyphs around here or anything like that? And there is no other evidence anywhere else in this area in the land of Midian where they were, you know, showing like the worship of cows like this. I mean, it's really just prevalent. All this symbolism that they've put here. And this is going right up to Mount Sinai. Yeah. It is sacrificial for the sacrificial animals. It'd be in this little pin, holding pin. Wow. This wall is still intact. That's, this is incredible. Then Moses built an altar at the foot of the mountain and set up 12 pillars representing the 12 tribes of Israel. He sent young Israelite men and they offered burn offerings and sacrificed young bulls as fellowship offerings to the Lord. Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls and the other half he sprinkled on the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read it to the people. They responded, Everything the Lord has said, we will do and we will obey. Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, this is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you. And Moses went up the mountain to meet with God where the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. We're sitting in like 5,000 feet and the top of Sinai is a little over 7,300 feet. So it's a couple thousand feet up from here. We're just looking at what our line will be going up there. You kind of see some of the boulders right when you see it. Yeah, and then you follow the far right pillar. So you kind of adjust yourself to that as you move up. That's where we begin. Straight up. Nobody else is here. First leg of the journey, Elijah's cave, then the plateau, then to the summit. You can see the altar down there to your right. Right below this sheer face. Yeah, sheer right above us. Steep, totally manageable. It's nicer, obviously, when you get a little wind coming in. How you feel? It's not so bad. It's just the heat. As soon as we stepped out of the car, it started cooking. It's like you're walking on a furnace. Hot rock. It's the hottest days of the year right now. As we're also following the news in the world, there's a massive strike on Iran today. And neighboring countries have been seeing the salvo of rockets going to Israel. And today we just heard that they struck the nuclear reactors. In Iran. And we feel about as removed as possible. As we're hiking up here. It is. It's below it. Look at that. There's his cave. Oh, wow. Cool. More than half a millennium separates the footsteps of Moses from those of Elijah upon this mountain. By the time Elijah fled to Sinai, the memory of covenant still echoed in these stones. He came not as a leader of a nation, but as a fugitive prophet, driven by fear, longing for the voice of the Lord. Elijah arose and fled for his life and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. He went into a cave and spent the night there. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. What are you doing here, Elijah? And the Lord said, go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. A great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, an earthquake. After the earthquake, a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Even as time and empires shifted, this cave remained a sanctuary for the faithful, a place where the noise of the world falls away and only the still small voice remains. Look at this. There you see it. Sinai is just behind there with its distinctive, very dark rock that surrounds. We've been kind of traversing along this steep area coming up from Elijah's cave. But now we're going to turn the corner. We'll be looking down into the plateau. Look at that. That is a plateau. It's a plateau. I mean, that's like a, it's like a football field. Wow. I mean, it's just a plateau, man. Look at that. They came before the Lord, the 70 elder. They ate and they met God. They said it shown like sapphire stones across there. Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and 70 of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel. And there was under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone. And as it were the body of heaven and his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel, he laid not his hand. Also, they saw God and did eat and drink. And the Lord said unto Moses, come up to me into the Mount and be there. And I will give thee tables of stone and a law and commandments, which I have written that thou mayest teach them. Yeah. Imagine this being right here where the elders would have been. And the people below, Israelites below would have seen, you know, thick clouds, lightning, thunder, just this incredible scene. The Lord's just sitting upon this and you can't help but see the peak is dark. I mean, the fact that this is just exactly as I said, I mean, it works out perfectly. And then you're just constantly looking up at the mountain. Thinking it through this blackened section now. Some of it just looks completely charred like there's a forest fire. It kind of has that feeling. Yeah, it just looks like it's burned. And it came to pass on the third day in the morning that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the Mount and the voice of the trumpet exceedingly loud so that all the people in the camp trembled. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace. And the whole Mount quaked greatly. And the Lord called Moses up to the top of the Mount. And Moses went up and God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord thy God. You shall have no other gods before you. Do not take the name of the Lord in vain. You shall not murder your father and your mother. You shall not steal. You shall not commit adultery. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. You shall not bear false witness. Make no carved images nor bow to idols. You shall not covet what belongs to another. And he gave unto Moses when he had made an end of communing with him upon Mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone written with the finger of God.