Satan attacks Philadelphia Church of God by using Hamas and Orthodox Jews

The Philadelphia Church of God has been working overtime in promoting their Hezikiah find from their archaeological dig in Jerusalem.  They claim that one miracle after another is happening because this dig has been blessed by their god.  However, Satan is also busy at work attacking the dig and the PCG.

Satan hates the Philadelphia church of God!

One day, Brianna Weeks was helping the dig registrar, Alexandra, collect and register finds. One small animal figurine leg had gone missing—the fear was that it had been thrown out near the washing area. Alexandra was desperately looking for the piece in that location, but returned without finding it. Brianna said a silent prayer, asking God to help Alexandra find it. I’ll let Brianna summarize the rest:

It wasn’t long before Alexandra got up to go look for the leg again. She looked in the exact same spot that she had looked before—only this time, I heard a gasp. She had found it! She brought it over to me with a look of total disbelief on her face. She couldn’t believe it. She told me over and over how she just couldn’t believe she’d found it. Then she said that she knew it was a miracle. I was throwing a little party in my head; it was absolutely amazing to see God answer my prayer like that and to see that even she realized that this was a special thing that had happened. She came back to me for days after that, telling me over and over about how she had found the leg and how she still just couldn’t believe it.

The miracles kept on coming.  

Another was the general energy on the dig site. It is a rigorous routine, especially for the students: waking up around 4 a.m., beginning the dig at 6:30 a.m., finishing at 2:30 p.m., taking college classes throughout the afternoon and on into the evening. Yet somehow, we felt more energized than one would expect, considering the regimen. Callum Wood (a 2012 digger) recalled trying to maintain the (incredibly productive!) schedule after the dig was over—in his words, “Not a chance.” The ability to handle the intense workload “was one of the biggest miracles I remember from the dig,” he said. There are the general aches and pains, but it is common for the students to report that, upon entering the dig site, the aches and pains disappear—until the dig day is over and we walk back out of the gate. 

Of course, anything that God loves, Satan hates. And so there are the clear satanic attacks that come with digging—particularly on this excavation. For that initial 2017 meeting for the dig to start, Stephen Flurry was originally intended to go—instead, he was grounded in the Philippines, his wife sick and unable to secure a doctor’s note to fly. One of the students who came in to participate on the dig was hassled at the airport by an immigration officer. Despite having the correct paperwork, he was lambasted as a “liar.” Archaeologist Brent Nagtegaal, waiting on the other side of Customs, talked on the phone with this officer—he was also castigated as a “liar.” One day there was a massive gas explosion just down the road from our apartment. We noticed what had happened as we neared home, returning from the dig site. The hunt for survivors was being conducted in the parking garage where it had happened; one person was killed and three injured.

One day, a sinister event happened. A man stopped by the dig site to meet with Dr. Mazar—he had worked with her and us about 10 years ago during the City of David excavations. The meeting was nothing unusual. But just two days later, he was stabbed to death a few hundred yards away in the Old City. The tragedy struck us as particularly unusual—we had no contact for a decade, and within two days of meeting him, he was killed. It was a stark reminder of how much Satan hates these excavations and that we must pray for God’s protection. 

And who could forget Operation Pillar of Defense, which occurred during our 2012 excavation? Hamas had, for the first time, fired long-range rockets at Jerusalem from Gaza. The air around us was sporadically filled with the howling of air raid sirens and the thump! of the rockets as they crashed in the distance, fortunately causing little harm or damage. Hearing the sirens was an eerie experience—that was the first time they had ever been used in Jerusalem. 

Then there was the strong verbal abuse and protests by Orthodox Jews attempting to shut down the City of David excavation in Area G, accusing us (falsely) of digging up tombs. Hundreds of Jews had succeeded in shutting down an excavation there a decade before, pelting the excavators with rocks. This one, though, they couldn’t run us off. That area yielded up the important finds of the Gedeliah bulla and the exciting tunnel continuing underneath the Stepped Stone Structure. During later digs on the Ophel, we were on the receiving end of rock throwing—from Arabs atop the southern wall of the Temple Mount. The stones could have done immense damage had they hit their mark—yet we were protected and the dig was allowed to continue.