On May 20, 2005, the Israeli newspaper, Arutz Sheva, published an article entitled: "Now’s the Time to Find Holy Lost Ark." In it, they quoted Vendyl Jones as saying that he would find the Ark by August 14 (Tisha B’Av, or Av 9). The following correction from the Vendyl Jones website says: "Since returning from Israel, Vendyl has answered many letters and phone calls, asking about this date. We were not initially aware how widespread this statement has become, quoted in many newspapers throughout the Jewish world. Of course it has caused a lot of excitement. However, Vendyl was slightly, but significantly, misquoted. What he actually said was that it would be very appropriate IF he could discover the Ark by Tisha B’Av. At this time it is obviously not going to happen. However, as soon as the funding permits, he will be in Israel to drill the bore hole and proceed with the dig to uncover the Tabernacle and the Ark. We are hoping that this will be in September."
To give our readers some background on the search for the Temple treasures, I would like to include excerpts from a series of articles written by Gerard Robins for the Jewish Herald Voice Newspaper, Houston, Texas (May 2000):
"In 1947, the same year that the modern State of Israel was voted into existence, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in an area called Qumran ("Two Moons"), along the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. A Bedouin’s rock ricocheted into an unseen cave breaking a crock, and the results of that find have been reverberating ever since. The texts of the major scrolls were essentially controlled very closely by a small group of scholars for over 45 years, and it is only in the past decade that these texts have been available for interpretation by scholars at large. Considerable controversy has raged over the content and interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, much of which finally came to light as a result of divisions amongst the original group of scholars assigned to interpret the Scrolls.
"In 1952, a seven foot scroll, unlike any other, was found in cave #3 at Qumran by workers digging under the supervision of Professor Gerald Harding. It was made of the purest copper, and had been engraved in reverse writing from the back side to produce raised Hebrew letters on the surface. To my knowledge, no other copper scroll has ever been found in Israel. The Copper Scroll was taken to Manchester, England where, with great difficulty, it was unraveled and the text made legible. Much of the text read like a simple inventory. Much of it was a long list of geographical, geological and topographical features, but in language and context that has been described by words such as ‘mysterious, intriguing, vague, controversial or evasive.’
"Some of the text and context was clear, some was a jumble of half-sentences, dead-ends, and squiggle marks, etc. that seemed to defy interpretation. (In recent years, a Jewish authority on the Scroll, M. A. Ben-Luria said: ‘… the scroll could not be understood without a knowledge of rabbinical literature and vocabulary.) Baffled by its contents, the discovery team withheld news of its discovery for four years. They subsequently released a transcription of the text (later found to contain 80 transcription errors!) along with their initial interpretation, but offered a heavy dose of doubt that its contents were genuine. Many who attempted to deal with its contents labeled it as a ‘hoax,’ ‘a forgery,’ ‘the work of a madman,’ ‘Jewish mystical folklore,’ etc. and it was generally considered a dead issue and ignored by almost all of the academic authorities.
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