Amazing But True Story #4

Amazing But True Stories

Jabal Al Lawz, Saudi Arabia (actual site of Mt. Sinai)

Explorer Bob Cornuke writes:

"In all the bustle I had failed to look for the one feature that had gripped us from a distance: the strange, dark crown that shrouded the summit like a permanent shadow. Glancing about I saw that the entire surface where we stood appeared stained, or tinted, a deep unnatural black. The rocks, even the dirt, had a shiny black pigment, like polished obsidian--a startling effect. Seeing it from a distance was one thing, but this genuinely baffled us. We stood on what appeared to be a vast vein of exposed coal, all within a few paces of the top. What could cause such a thing? . . . ."

". . . . 'If it's volcanic,' I said, 'then the rock inside will be black, too.' I picked up a piece of charred rock the size of a watermelon, lifted it high over my head, and slammed it on the sharp edge of a boulder. It cracked clean, and we leaned in close to look: an exterior of melted stone, slick black like cultured glass, encasing a reddish-tan core. The interior rock was ordinary brown granite!"

"Goose bumps bristled on the back of my neck. What type of heat could melt surface rock to a black marble glaze--smooth to the touch like buffed opal--yet leave the underlying granite intact? Clearly, something unnatural, intensely hot, had touched the mountaintop. But what kind of heat is potent enough to charbroil solid rock, leaving the marrow medium rare? Handling the rocks like fine china, [co-explorer Larry Williams] kept asking, 'What could do that?' An iron smelter? An atomic forge? A laser canon beamed from a satellite?"

"As I beheld the melted rock, a passage leapt to mind of a mountain 'covered in smoke.' I flipped open my Bible to Exodus. 'Here it is,' I said. From Exodus 19:16-19, I read aloud the account of how, three days after the Exodus party [Moses and the Children of Israel] arrived at Mount Sinai, the mountain was mysteriously cloaked in a 'thick cloud,' the skies above filled with thunder and lightning. I read how a 'very loud trumpet blast' nearly scared the Israelites to death, causing 'everyone in the camp [to] tremble.' Moses then lead the people out of the camp to assemble at the foot of the mountain. And as I read the following text, Larry's mouth fell open: 'Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the LORD descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently.'"

Excerpt taken from The Mountain of God: The Discovery of the Real Mt. Sinai, by Robert Cornuke and David Halbrook (Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000).