Teaching Sunday school was rewarding, but required hard work. I usually spent at least eight hours preparing a lesson. Also, during these years I ran sound for services and events, worked with Sonlight and Royal Rangers, and served on the board. At times I felt stretched, but change was coming.
One Sunday morning, a member of our adult class asked me if I had ever considered writing a book. It struck a nerve, because I hated to admit that I felt called to write, yet wasn't producing anything. Then, after Sunday School in the main service, Pastor Moore preached a sermon titled
“Getting Out of the Rut.” After church I remarked to Brenda that I thought I had heard from God that morning. Brenda said, “So did I!” Remarkably, neither one of us, in my memory, had ever made such a statement after a church service.
Brenda asked me what I had heard, so I told her that I believed God wanted me to write a book about evidence for faith. Fifteen years had passed since my first attempt to publish a book. I then followed that up by telling her that I couldn't see how to free up enough time to write.
So then Brenda said she had a solution. She said she believed God was telling her we should switch churches to help my dad's new church get established. They had been meeting in a school but now had purchased a building.
So we switched churches and I began writing a book.
Switching churches was a major move that caused us to feel both sadness as we left friends, and also excitement as we embraced new opportunities. For us, the move became a major milestone in our spiritual journeys.
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Amazing Evidence
For the next several years I worked on writing the book, “Amazing Evidence: Grounds for Belief.” Part of the focus of the book was evidence that the Egyptian army actually drowned in the Red Sea, and that a mountain in Saudi Arabia was the real Mount Sinai. As a result of my research, I read books and watched videos by people who had unearthed some of this evidence. This left me feeling somewhat unsettled, for it seemed all the people who had written about this subject were explorers with major discoveries, while I had nothing to add to the discussion. So one day I prayed and asked God if he would allow me to discover something that I could use in the book. I then recall ending my prayer by saying, “Like that would be possible, because I am stuck here in Illinois.”
A couple of days later, on February 21, 2008 to be exact, our son Justin was helping me document artifacts around what we believe is the site of the real Mount Sinai where Moses camped in Saudi Arabia. We were doing this by looking at satellite images in Google Earth. Then Justin scrolled past something that looked like a skeleton. We were both a little startled. It had already passed from the screen, so he quickly returned to it. That began a process of investigating this object. It measured about the size of a football field, and looked like it might have a tail that stretched for one third of a mile.
After a couple of days, we decided it could be the Biblical sea serpent, Leviathan, which the Bible describes as having been killed in “the wilderness.” Since the wilderness is the area where the children of Israel wandered, it made sense that the skeleton of Leviathan at the foot of the real Mount Sinai. Levitical traditions suggest that the death of Leviathan provided food for the Israelites. It is also said that its skin povided leather for making women’s shoes and the covering for the tabernacle.
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Is this the skeleton of Leviathan? It is about the length of a football field. Placing this image next to one taken from a different angle creates a 3D image, in which it can be seen that this object lies above ground level, and appears hollow beneath the torso. Notice the shadow on the far side of the object. A semi truck at the same scale inside the black inset square reveals how huge the object is. (Google Earth coordinates 28.5637N, 35.2808E).
Over the next couple of years we were able to accumulate a substantial amount of evidence. I also created 3D images of the skeleton by paying to have a satellite take a picture of it from a different angle, and it still looks like a skeleton even in three dimensions.
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This tile floor at Zippori shows a fire-breathing Leviathan playing in the Red Sea near Mount Sinai. (Photo by Justin Hatch)
Then, Justin took a trip with a group to Israel. Their tour took them to Zippori where there was an ancient tile floor. Justin took digital photos of the floor. The guide pointed out it was a map with an image of a fire-breathing Leviathan swimming in the Red Sea, which would place him about twenty miles from the location of the object we found.
The tile floor also shows a tower on the edge of the Red Sea that Solomon may have had constructed. It looks remarkably similar to the ones Ron Wyatt found on each side of the Gulf of Aqaba, where Wyatt proposed the Red Sea crossing actually took place. So the tile floor became another piece of previously unknown evidence connecting our skeleton with the Red Sea crossing and Mount Sinai. So in answer to prayer, this skeleton-like object may indeed prove to be a discovery. Only time will tell for sure.
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Prayer moves a U-Haul
Faith Community Church was our new church, and I was working hard on the book, yet there was still time for helping a member move. When the day for the move arrived, a blizzard had dumped a lot of snow. We managed to fill a large U-Haul truck, but when we tried to drive away, the truck was stuck. Everyone pushed, and we rocked it back and forth, but it still wasn't going anywhere. Someone suggested we pray, so we gathered around.
As as we finished praying, a 4-wheel drive pickup truck stopped and asked if we needed help. They lived a few blocks away, and amazingly had also rented the same size U-Haul truck. When it became stuck, they had just finished pulling it out with their truck before they found us. With their fresh experience, pulling ours out was quick and easy.
So God lined up experienced help, then led them down our street with perfect timing to offer help when we finally got desperate enough to pray! •
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