The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever (Isaiah 40:8, NIV).
To me, the best of the Indiana Jones movies is the first one, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy is an archaeologist who follows trails and clues, allowing him to snatch the ark of the covenant from, of all people, Nazis. The movie closes with a plain box containing the ark being stacked among thousands of other anonymous boxes in a giant government warehouse, presumably to be lost for a few thousand more years.
Except for the snakes—I do hate snakes—this was a great movie. Unfortunately, its premise is all Hollywood. The ark of the covenant is not lost; it was destroyed thousands of years ago. The Jewish temple that held the ark was destroyed twice: first by the Babylonians in 586 BC and then in AD 70 by the Romans. It is really just dust now.
So, if the ark represented the presence of God to the people of Israel, why would God let it be destroyed? Perhaps God allowed this because He knew if we had it, with the two tablets of the Ten Commandments inside, we might make it an idol and worship it. But mainly, God allowed it, because when we trust Christ as Savior and Lord, we can have the presence of God within us at all times. That presence is called the Holy Spirit.
Finding Jesus is a whole lot better than finding the lost ark.
