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Jan. 9, 2026 - Jim Bakker Show
28:21
The Jim Bakker Show with Clayton Van Huss
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Finding Shiloh 00:13:54
Welcome to the Jim Baker Family Show.
Our special guest today is Clayton Van Huss.
Our co-host today is Reverend Mondo Delevega.
And now, here is your host, Pastor Ricky Baker.
Hello, friends.
Thanks for tuning in.
You're watching the PTL Television Network.
This is the Jim Baker Family Show.
Friends, today we have with us an exciting guest, Clayton Van Huss.
Clayton, I want to say thank you for being on the broadcast with us today.
Thanks, Ricky.
Clayton, you've been to Israel a few times.
You've dug in the dirt a few times.
Tell us a little bit about what it is and what it is that you do.
Sure.
So I'm an archaeologist.
I'm a biblical archaeologist.
I dig at the site of Tel Shiloh in Israel.
It is Biblical Shiloh.
Wow.
That was the first capital of the Israelites.
They set up the tabernacle, and the Ark of the Covenant was there for over 300 years until the Philistines got their hands on it.
But that's another story.
So you've probably uncovered some interesting things.
You actually brought something here with you today.
I want to be excited to talk about it.
But what would you say is the most exciting thing or the best thing that you found while you're over in Israel?
Well, you're jumping right into it.
So I've got to tell a little story to get it there.
So it was my first season digging, and I was a first-year archaeology student.
And so I thought I knew everything, right?
And so we're up here digging in this amazing spot.
And I keep finding these little pieces of pottery, and they're chipped into circles.
Someone in antiquity took broken pottery, chipped it into circles, and used it.
And so I look at that.
And as a first-year archaeology student, I say, these are jar stoppers.
They're putting these in a jar because that's what we're taught.
And I was really trying to impress my supervisor, who also happened to be the assistant director of the dig.
And, you know, she was a pretty girl.
And so I was trying to impress her.
And she looked at it.
She said, that's not a jar stopper.
Okay.
So I find another one.
I'm like, oh, look, here's a jar stopper.
And she says, no, no, that's not a jar stopper.
I find another one.
No, if that's a jar stopper, it's the ugliest one I've ever seen.
We've got a lot of jars here.
I can't do anything to impress this girl.
So I go home and I'm doing some research on the secondary usage of pottery.
Everything gets used more than once.
And I find these little circles.
They're not perfect.
They're not jar stoppers.
And they look just like these things I'm finding.
And it turns out they're toilet paper.
Oh, very exciting.
2,000-year-old toilet paper.
And you may say, why is that the most amazing thing, the greatest discovery?
Because somehow it impressed that girl enough that we were married at the dig site two seasons ago.
You're not going to believe this.
That's awesome.
On the day, my son and I were asking each other questions about what type of paper they used.
Tell my no-no.
I did my details.
Now I know.
Yeah.
I actually sat down with a subject matter expert.
We were talking about ancient toilet paper, and this is what we came up with.
They'll find them with people's names written on them sometimes.
Wow.
And if you remember, it was popular for a while to go to that store in the mall and buy toilet paper with a president you didn't like on it.
It was the same idea.
The same, I thought.
Funny.
Nothing is new under the sun.
I was going to say they had the practical jokes even back then, didn't they?
So you found your wife over there, and you guys have continued your work on discovering new things.
Sure.
And of course, Shiloh is an amazing place because God says, this is the place where I first set my name.
This is where the first temple of Israel was.
You know, we talk about Solomon's temple, but really they were going to the tabernacle for 300 years before that.
The Ark of the Covenant sat there.
Shiloh is a place where God hears the silent, desperate prayers of a barren woman.
You remember, Hannah goes there and she prays and she prays, God, give me a son and I will give him back to you.
Now, this is an important thing, and I think we're going to touch on this some more.
Yes.
Giving things back to God.
I will give him back to you.
So he hears.
No words come out of her mouth, but he hears.
Later, when she does give her son, who is a result of this, Samuel hears audibly the voice of God at Shiloh.
This is a place where God hears and God speaks.
And so, to get to excavate there, and we have three areas of the site that we're very interested in.
We have one area that appears to be a city gate, very likely the same gate where Eli was sitting when he got the news that the Philistines had taken the Ark of the Covenant and he fell over and died.
We also have an area that's what's known as a fa visa, and it's a trash dump.
Archaeologists love trash dumps, you find the coolest stuff in there.
But a fa visa is a sacred trash dump.
When you have sacrifices, when you give things to God, they don't go in a normal trash dump, they go into a special sacred pit.
And so, we have one of those, and we're trying to determine if it's Israelite from the tabernacle worship, or if it could be Canaanite from before.
And we're finding fascinating things there: bones, very kosher bones.
We're finding pottery that's been broken because you bring a libation offering, oil or wine, and you pour it out before the Lord, and then you smash the vessel.
And so, we're finding this in this site.
We're also finding something fascinating.
We're finding gold jewelry, necklace pendants, and earrings and things.
And we just put a paper out on that.
But this jewelry apparently was given to the Lord, these Canaanite pagan symbols.
Very interesting.
But I think the thing that most people want to hear about is: have you found the tabernacle?
Yes.
So we have a structure, and we haven't published it yet.
So we're still working on the archaeological context, but it's an Iron Age structure, which means it dates to the time of the tabernacle.
By the way, Shiloh was a place that was not inhabited year-round by many people.
I want to say this.
Geographically, before we dive into this, tell people where Shiloh is.
Okay, that's easy.
It's north of Jerusalem.
If you head up the modern route of Highway 60, it's south of the city of Shechem.
Today, it's about a 35-minute drive north of Jerusalem.
I said, look at a map here.
It says it's pretty close to the Mount of Olives, not too far away from about a 30-minute drive.
That's not bad.
That's like from where we live right now to Walmart.
It's not a bad drive.
So there you go.
Yeah, there you go.
And this is the area of Judea and Samaria.
I got to have some fun up here.
Shiloh, Walmart.
Shiloh.
Sure.
You find some interesting things at Walmart, by the way.
You do.
If you can find 2,000-year-old toilet paper at Walmart, I'm going to be impressed.
Probably show somewhere in the back warehouse.
So you believe that you found the site of the actual tabernacle.
Sure.
In the Bible, we know that the tabernacle is a tent.
How are you going to find that archaeologically?
Mostly the tempo.
But if you read and you pay attention, you see that the Bible starts to talk about a permanent structure more than tents.
Whereas we have the words like curtains and veils being used in the wilderness, at Shiloh, we have walls.
We have doorposts.
Tents don't have those things.
In fact, Eli is standing at the doorpost when he sees Hannah praying silently, and he thinks she's drunk.
So he's at the doorpost.
Also in the Mishnah, we have two different Jewish writings from later that say that a stone structure was built and that the tent was put over top as a roof.
And so this monumental building, we're finding all sorts of cultic items.
And by that, I mean religious.
So very likely we have a site that could be the tabernacle.
Wow.
One of the things I want to talk about is during this excavation that you're doing, you were part of what took place during the Hamas conflict.
Yes.
Tell us what was that like?
Sure.
Interestingly, the season before in 2023, in June, we actually had a run-in with Hamas because we are in the area and we were coming back from some things we were doing in Nablus in Shechem.
And a pickup truck in front of us screeched to a halt.
There were Israeli soldiers for some reason by the side of the road behind trucks.
And we were at a gas station, a little homeless restaurant in the settlement of Eli.
And two gunmen had gone in and they killed two 14-year-old boys.
They killed a 21-year-old who just returned from his service and then a 64-year-old man who was in the parking lot pumping gas.
The truck in front of us screeched to a halt.
An Israeli citizen got out, pulled out a pistol.
An armed citizen pulled out a pistol and a man standing in front of him with an M16 and we were behind him and gunshots and firing and he killed the gunman.
He was shot twice.
Wow.
And turns out Hamas took credit for this attack.
And this was just months before the war started.
So we've dug two seasons in Israel during the war.
And this year, we had a very interesting situation because we were there when Iran started firing their rockets.
And so every night you get woken up, you have an app on your phone that tells you it's a siren, red alert, right, go to your bomb shelter.
And so every night, you know, we have this stuff coming up.
And so everybody's running downstairs in the hotel.
And we stay in a Palestinian hotel in Jerusalem.
And so we go down to our bomb shelter.
Our last day digging at Shiloh, we're out there in the open fields and we watched a number of rockets get shot down directly overhead, out here in the country, getting shot down over the site.
And we could not leave through the airport.
So the Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv was shut down.
And so we prayed and we sent videos to people at home, pray for us.
And the Lord provided and we made a reverse exodus.
We drove down to the Egyptian border, crossed on foot, got another bus, took it to Cairo, and then we were able to get ourselves home that way.
Wow, man.
Fascinating.
God is good.
Listen, this is an application for you that no matter what is going on around you, and it looks impossible, God will always make a way when there's no way.
The key is learn to hear his voice in the middle of chaos.
The Bible says my sheep know my voice.
That's right.
Get to know his voice, meaning get to know the word.
And this season, sir, I believe God is going to use audible to change our path because of what's taking place or what is coming.
Here in this ministry, we believe that you ought to be a watchman on the wall for your family.
That's right.
Not just for the nation.
And there's a lot of people that self-proclaim that they're watchmen on the wall for the nations, for this, but yet God is calling you to be a watchman on the wall for your family, for your community, for your church.
There are things that are going to happen that audibly God is going to have to speak to you if there's going to be a way out.
Now, with God, there's always a way out.
Always.
Let me ask you this.
In your findings, how real does the Bible come alive to you?
It's been debated.
It's been even wars have been fought over what's been said here.
Yet you are in the middle of a site that is revealing that this book is real.
That's right.
Absolutely.
How does it prove that it's real?
Well, that is one of the things I love about biblical archaeology because what we are finding in the ground, it matches up with what we find in scripture.
You talk about the word and how important the word of God is.
And if you don't mind, I'll do a little show and tell here.
I have an artifact that I teach with.
Now, God has a way of multiplying.
He allowed me to get this lamp years ago, and I have used it to teach, and he has multiplied many ways through this.
But this, this is a lamp.
And this is an Iron Age lamp from when the Iron Age 1 becomes the Iron Age 2.
And everybody's going, yeah, I know exactly what that means.
No, what that means.
I have no idea what you mean.
Exactly.
This lamp is about 3,000 years old.
Wow.
So think of about 1000 BC.
Who was on the throne of Israel in 1000 BC?
That was King David.
What did King David write?
He wrote the Psalms.
Psalm 119.
That's right.
105.
Wow.
And you said it.
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.
This is the lamp that King David was thinking about.
These are the lamps of his time.
It's a clay bowl.
You put some olive oil in it, the same stuff you buy at the grocery store, and a wick made of linen.
And you light that and it puts out a little bit of light.
In fact, it puts out so little light that this particular lamp, you'll notice there are burn marks on either side where someone put three wicks into this lamp because they need more light.
And we think of, you know, our path and lighting our path with a big flashlight.
And we have those today, right?
100 yards down the path, you'll see the eyes of the deer sparkling in the woods.
Well, they didn't have that.
Olive oil produces very little light.
And that's a dangerous place, by the way, in the Near East at night.
There are rocks, there are pits, many pits, there are scorpions, terrible things to step on.
And yet, this lamp provides enough light to take a step safely.
Seychell's Shield Against Contaminants 00:02:58
And that's what God's word does.
When we listen to God's word, he illuminates the next step on our path.
So when you read Psalm 119, 105, that's the illustration.
Can I hold it?
Yes.
Yes, you may.
Here are the thumbprints of the potter.
Drop it on live.
Right there in the dips, you can feel the thumbs of the potter.
It's an amazing thing.
We'll be right back after this special message.
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And now, back to the show.
But I want to get back to you, sir, because it's fascinating the things that you're finding that are matching to what the Bible has taught, has been written about.
And I want to say this.
This ministry is here to tell the truth.
And this ministry has taken a lot of hits to tell the truth.
Archaeology And Scripture 00:10:48
The truth is that the Bible is real.
Why is it so important for us to get to know the word so when we walk into Israel, it becomes real to us?
Oh, now that's a question.
To get to know the word, to be familiar with what the Bible teaches us, to be able to have that in our hearts and in our minds, to be intellectual.
I mean, think about Paul tells Timothy, study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman who needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
The Bereans, they check to see if the things that Paul and Silas were saying was true.
Know the word, and then you will know the counterfeit.
Know the word, and you will know the truth when you see it.
When you know the voice of God, when you know the voice of your shepherd and you hear it, you know it's true, and it's not a false calling, it's not a false idea being put in or false teaching.
And we see that a lot in the world of archaeology.
We do see what I refer to as the unicorns.
Don't ride the unicorn.
We see a lot of really attractive things, these great claims made, and you have to take those apart.
You have to look at them and say, what's going on here?
Because remember, as believers, we make the most sensational claim of all.
And that is that a man died for our sins.
That he rose again on the third day, and that he's preparing a place for us and he's coming back for us.
That is a sensational claim.
So if I take God's word out of context and I teach falsely and I show false things, who's going to listen to me when I tell them about Jesus?
That's right.
This is why it's so important.
And this is what archaeology does for us.
And a lot of people say, I don't need archaeology.
I have the Bible.
And that's great.
That's great because the Bible stands alone.
But remember when Thomas said, you know what?
I'll believe when I can touch.
What did Jesus say?
Did he say, oh, you know, never mind you?
No.
He said, touch.
That's what he did.
He held out his hand.
That's right.
Touch, feel, see.
He stooped to where Thomas needed him.
And so that's who we are as believers.
We need sometimes to see these things.
And we know people have given their life to Jesus because of these efforts.
They see something that dates back to the time where they see the Mosiac and this says, you know, the first century church writing in stone and these little tiles about Jesus Christ and they realize, oh, it's all real.
Yeah.
This isn't fake.
This isn't some made-up book.
This isn't, you know, a culmination of writings that happened thousands of years later to try to dupe the big public into a one-way thinking.
No, this is real.
Christ was real.
He was fully man, fully God.
He walked this earth and he truly did die for our sins.
So yes, I do believe sometimes it takes holding something like that to realize, wow, you know what?
This is real faith.
I'm going to give my life to the Lord.
I love what you're doing.
You have a couple of DVD sets I want to talk about.
This one, because we're in the, you know, we just passed the Christmas season as these shows are playing.
We're into the new year.
Archaeology ruins Christmas.
Thanks.
Yeah, yeah.
Come on.
Luckily, I didn't watch it before Christmas.
But now my 2026 Christmas.
So tell us about this.
Sure.
So what's the Christmas story as we know it, right?
So Joseph and Mary, they go to Bethlehem for the census, and they get there, and there's no room in the inn.
So that really nice old innkeeper says, you know what?
You can stay in my stable.
So that's where they stay.
Jesus is born.
He's placed in a manger.
Yes.
All is good.
Well.
Jordan ruined Christmas for us.
Yes.
So Dr. Gary Byers and I talk about Christmas in this, and he's an expert on many things.
But Christmas, he ruined it for me.
That's why I call it that.
When I first met him, I said, you ruined Christmas for me.
And so I was like, you know, we need to work together.
And so we came up with this.
And the idea is that inn that's mentioned in the Bible, the word that's translated there to inn is not the word for inn.
No, no.
No, it's a Greek word.
It means kataluma.
Well, the Greek word is kataluma, but it means upper room.
It's used elsewhere in the New Testament by Luke even to talk about Jesus' last days.
He met in the Kataluma with his disciples.
Oh, wow.
So it's a guest room in a house.
Okay, that's interesting.
Well, what about the innkeeper?
Never mentioned.
Never mentioned.
Luke does talk about an innkeeper later in his book when the Good Samaritan comes by and helps the man on the road.
He takes him to an inn and to an innkeeper, and those words are completely different.
So what's going on in Bethlehem?
Surely they were in the innkeeper's stable.
Well, if you understand a first century house in Judea, likely this is the family of Joseph.
They're going there.
It's his family home, Bethlehem.
So they go there, and there's no room in the guest room.
All the relatives are there.
You've seen Christmas movies.
And all the relatives are there.
And you can imagine all these Jewish relatives and this very pregnant lady, and they're all telling her how to raise her kid and all that stuff.
She doesn't have to stay in that stuffy room with all that.
They put her downstairs.
There is a place where you keep the animals at night.
It could be a cave, but it's inside the walls of the home.
And it has a manger, which is a stone box.
We never think of mangers as being made of stone.
We're seeing a little wood, you know, a little wood box.
That's in our nativity sets.
We have the little wood boxes.
No, this is a stone carved basin.
And you'll see these when you go to Israel on trips, you'll see these everywhere.
And so they're in a home.
They're surrounded by family who loves them.
See, that's what God means for us, to have family.
He puts us where he puts us.
And you think of Jesus in the first Christmas in the home of Joseph's family, probably, down there.
And also, the animals are usually kept next to the kitchen, very, very sanitary.
But have you ever heard this before?
Never.
Thanks.
Sorry, I'm ruining Christmas for you.
But it's different.
Yeah, the different variations I've heard of it.
You know, she went to an inn, no room in the end.
They put her out like, you know, in a stable near the end.
The other version was, you know, she went to this innkeeper and keeper, absolutely, you know, sorry, no room for you.
And they said, well, we have a cave where we keep our animals.
You can go, you can go do it.
I've never heard of this.
This makes more sense.
Yeah, absolutely.
So you're actually tiny, saying this isn't just, oh, I have this theory.
No, no, no.
This is archaeology and the word of God in the original text.
Right.
Actually, marrying the Greek, taking the article.
Theology and math.
Did you guys know this?
Did you guys know this?
I wasn't aware of this.
Yeah.
I'm telling you, it's ruining Christmas.
I'm happy to ruin Christmas for you.
Lucky, we got through this, Chris.
That's an incredible.
So you have this availability.
How long would you say this is roughly?
Okay, so that is roughly, that's roughly an hour and a half.
It's incredible.
It's three episodes of my biblically grounded program.
You know what I love about this module?
I think things like this, if you have a Wednesday night Bible study, you have a little projector, I think you should play things like this for your Wednesday night Bible study.
You also have a few other DVD sets I want to talk about, if it's okay with you.
A star and a sceptic.
Tell us about this.
So a star and a scepter goes back to Numbers 24, 17.
And, you know, we always talk about stars this time of year.
But Numbers 24, 17 is a prophecy made by the wicked prophet Balaam.
Yes.
Not the false prophet, the wicked prophet.
And so Balaam says that coming out of Israel will be a star and a scepter.
And again, we look at that with modern eyes.
Remember, we're separated from this.
This is late Bronze Age.
We're separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years.
What did the Moabites, when they heard this, because he was speaking to the Moabites, and what did the Israelites think when they thought of a star and a scepter?
A scepter is a mace.
It's a weapon.
And you see pictures of pharaohs holding people by the hair and beating them on the head with their mace.
That's a common thing.
And so he says that this coming Messiah will smash the forehead of Moab with his scepter.
That's what it's taught.
They understood that.
We don't.
We see a golden stick with jewels on it.
And the star, that's one that we miss so much.
But a star is the symbol of divinity.
Going back to the cuneiform dingir symbol, it was the symbol of divinity.
Even Balaam said the coming Messiah will be a god.
How many gods does Israel have?
Just one.
So the Messiah is divine and he is a king.
Wow.
Mono, that's incredible.
I thought about this yesterday about the mystery, the prophetic mystery of Christmas.
And I was reading and the Lord revealed to me.
And now I want to go back and watch what you taught because I want to be able to get it right next time.
But it was pretty much that.
Yeah.
The star never changed.
We change.
And it makes sense when the revealing of the Magi follow the star.
Yeah.
Meaning the star never moved.
The star was always there.
We move.
We move to North Carolina.
We move to Florida.
We think God changes.
No, God stays in place.
He says, my words are not your words.
My thoughts are not your thoughts.
God is a stable God.
Trust in him.
Follow him.
His consistency stays with you no matter what you're going through.
No matter if you're emotional, emotional.
God is a God that is stable in all his ways.
Man, I can't wait to watch this.
Awesome.
Amen.
Powerful.
We also have one more I want to talk about.
If you don't mind, just giving us a quick synopsis of this.
Finding Babel.
Sure.
And that's four episodes of Biblically Grounded, where I speak with my friend and professor.
He was my Hebrew professor, Dr. Doug Petrovich.
And he has a theory looking at the archaeology of the ancient Near East, Mesopotamia, the modern-day Iraq.
And he finds a certain timeframe when everybody left the biggest first city in the world.
And they all leave.
And we can follow them culturally through their artifacts into different parts of the ancient world.
And so he proposes that this site, which by many historians in ancient times said, oh, this is Babel.
So he lines up the archaeology to try to fit this site with Babel.
And it is a very nice fit.
Wow.
That's awesome.
Friends, I encourage you, go to Southwest Radio Ministries affiliate.
You can call our number.
It's 1-888-9881-588.
And you can get any of these DVDs in this set.
And I encourage you, go get them, get all of them.
This is going to bless you and what you're doing.
Clayton, I want to say thank you for being on the broadcast with us today.
God bless you, friends.
Don't miss this series that we're doing with Southwest Radio Ministries.
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Continue to watch, and we'll see you again tomorrow on the Jim Baker Family Show.
Bye-bye for today.
God bless you.
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