(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show, Jonathon is joined by Tim Mahoney, the documentarian behind the Patterns of Evidence films that show the archaeological evidence for biblical events.
“A Pattern of Evidence approach is to look for a pattern,” said Mahoney. “And a pattern means there’s more than one thing. And not only that, but you’re looking for it in the right sequence.”
“In some ways, I’m just an independent filmmaker that’s asking questions,” Mahoney said later in the episode. “I come from a Christian background. I’m wanting to find out, is this true?”
Mahoney describes what he does as an “investigation” rather than a “documentary,” however, telling Jonathon “the process of listening or gathering multiple points of view, I think was critical to the to the type of film that Patterns of Evidence films would become.”
“And so … today, there are a number of films that are called documentaries, but they’re actually not really a documentary because they’re more of a propaganda film. They look like they’re documenting things, but they’re really not telling the whole story. … I had to go and talk with people who said there was no evidence,” he said.
READ: Christian media resource reviews movies and other entertainment from a ‘biblical worldview’
Mahoney first began investigating the historicity of biblical events in 2002 after hearing that what looked like chariots were discovered on the bottom of the Red Sea, and that the historic location of Mount Sinai was in Saudi Arabia.
Describing what was found at a tomb by Austrian Egyptologist Dr. Manfred Bietak at the ancient city of Avaris, in a region of Egypt identified with the biblical Goshen, Mahoney said: “So there was a statue, and then the person would have been buried … deeper. And this statue had … reddish hair, and it had more like an Asiatic complexion on the skin. And it had a coat that was a multicolored coat. Wasn’t just like one color or anything.”
“And … it’s not a warrior,” Mahoney continued. “He’s got like a throw stick, a stick of authority. … And there are other tombs, principal tombs also in this graveyard, 11, by the way. And so the fact that there are 12 tombs and one of them is an Egyptian tomb to a non-Egyptian. But then the very interesting other connection to this is that the tomb was broken into twice. And what ended up happening was that the Bible tells us that Joseph knew about the promise to Abraham, that … Abraham’s descendants … would return someday to the Promised Land.”
“And Joseph held that promise, and he said to his brothers, ‘When you go back to the land that was promised to Abraham, and our families go back there, you have to take my bones with you and bury me there.’ And they agreed. So when Manfred Bietak dug up this area and this tomb he found that had been broken into twice and that there were no bones. And that also matched what was in the biblical text.”
The son of pastor Artur Pawlowski could be facing massive fines and jail time after he preached Bible verses outside a drag queen story time held at a public library over the weekend.
Nathaniel Pawlowski was detained and ticketed on Saturday by Calgary Police Service (CPS) because he was preaching too “close” to the drag event, in an apparent violation of a new and oppressive bylaw.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Pawlowski said that he was outside the event to “preach, read the Bible and just speak.”
Video of the incident shows Pawlowski along with his friend Deklan Friesen speaking to a crowd outside the library.
Calgary City Council last month passed a new “Safe and Inclusive Access Bylaw” that disallows “specified protests” both inside and outside all city-owned and affiliated public buildings. Mayor Jyoti Gondek put her full support behind the buffer zone bylaw.
Please tell Mayor Gondek that the bylaw violating Charter freedoms is both unjust and absurd
The bylaw means pastors or concerned parents protesting pro-LGBT events at public buildings are barred from getting within 100 meters of any such location.
Top constitutional lawyer John Carpay recently blasted Calgary City Council for going to “war” against Canadians’ freedoms by using bylaws to target people’s ability to protest events at public facilities, including drag queen performance directed at children.
In an opinion piece published on March 17 in the Western Standard, Carpay said “freedom of expression is meaningless if citizens are only allowed to say what’s approved by the government, or if expression is banished from public spaces.”
Pawlowski noted that his ticket has no penalty listed yet, as police must “review the evidence on me and that they will be stopping by my home to issue charges.”
His ticket does have a mandatory court appearance date. Each charge under Calgary’s bylaw carries a maximum fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Pawlowski had asked the police officers if they would also be enforcing “the same law on to the other side with the Antifa protesters”, but nobody was served a ticket except for he and Friesen.
In June 2022, Calgary City Council, under its left-leaning Mayor Jyoti Gondek, amended the city’s bylaws to “specifically prohibit insulting or demeaning behavior, including unwanted sexual advances, or harassing anyone on the basis of age, race, sexual orientation, disability, gender, gender identity or gender expression, among others.”
In February, Gondek vowed to use the bylaw to go after drag queen story hour protesters after some of the events were postponed by pro-family objectors.
In early March, fulfilling her promise, Calgary City Council then passed the bylaw that banned protesting against drag queen story hours or any other “LGBTQ” events held at public facilities.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Carpay noted that while there are limits to free speech, “Canadians have every right to express their views in public places, regardless of the content of the expression.”
He also wrote how a 1992 Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Zundel “explained all communications which convey or attempt to convey meaning are protected by the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms], unless the physical form by which the communication is made (for example, a violent act) excludes protection.”
“The purpose of the Charter’s free expression guarantee is to promote truth, self-fulfillment, and political and social participation. That purpose extends to the protection of minority beliefs which the majority regards as wrong or false,” wrote Carpay.
According to Carpay, Gondek seems to “believe it is wrong or false to oppose drag queen story readings in public libraries.”
“She is entitled to express her views, but not to impose her views on others by effectively banning peaceful public protests through a so-called ‘Safe and Inclusive Access’ bylaw,” noted Carpay.
There exists a “freedom of expression” which includes the “right” to choose “high-visibility locations to hold up signs or banners, sing or chant, hand out literature, gather signatures on a petition, and have a speaker get up on her soapbox,” continued the lawyer.
“Protests are often held at the locations where injustices (or perceived injustices) are actually occurring,” he added.
Christian pastor Derek Reimer was jailed and charged in early March for protesting a children’s drag queen story hour at a public library in Calgary.
Carpay wrote that the city council’s use of “coercive power to relegate peaceful protesters to obscure locations where they cannot be seen or heard,” amounts to “crushing a fundamental Charter freedom on which our democracy depends.”
“The point of protests is to be seen and heard,” wrote Carpay.
Carpay noted that being forced to stand 100 meters away from high-visibility and high-traffic areas “reduces freedom of expression to near irrelevance.”
“Protecting entrances from obstruction is already taken care of by the Criminal Code, and does not require a bylaw that imposes up to $10,000 in fines and up to a year in jail for peacefully protesting less than the length of four swimming pools away from an entrance,” charged Carpay.
According to Carpay, the Charter’s protection for free speech applies to those at the receiving end of a person speaking out.
“Potential listeners who have the right to hear diverse points of view, and to decide for themselves what is true and false rather than having Mayor Gondek decide on their behalf,” said Carpay.
“Calgary’s ‘Safe and Inclusive Access’ bylaw violates the rights of all Calgarians, speakers and listeners, and attacks diversity of thought and belief.”
Carpay noted that “repressive regimes always take great pains to ensure their subjects are kept ‘safe’ from ideas which the regime believes to be wrong or false.”
“In the past – and still today – those living in communist North Korea, national socialist Germany, theocratic Iran, Putin’s Russia, communist China and many other places have been kept very safe from ideas that the regime dislikes,” wrote Carpay.
Carpay noted that in a “free society,” there is no way everyone can be “safe” from hearing one’s opposing views.
“The ‘safety’ which woke activists on Calgary City Council are promising is attractive to those who support children being exposed to drag queens at public libraries,” wrote Carpay.
“But beware of the erosion of freedom, because the demons of censorship cannot be controlled after their release.”
In addition to Carpay, the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) has also objected to the new bylaw, and has vowed to commence a legal challenge against the “unconstitutional” policy.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
MORE INFORMATION:
Pastor Artur Pawlowski’s son detained in Calgary for preaching against drag show – LifeSiteNews
Canadian constitutional lawyer rips Calgary law banning drag queen story hour protests – LifeSiteNews
Mahoney also described the work of English Egyptologist David Rohl, who proposed in the late 20th century that the traditional chronology dealing with ancient Egypt was incorrect and attempted to fix it after reading about Bietak’s work.
“And this Egyptologist, David Rohl, was looking at [Bietak’s] reports, and he is an agnostic, so he’s not a person trying to prove the Bible … and he goes, ‘Wait a minute, … it looks like Manfred Bietak is uncovering the Israelites,” said Mahoney.
Discussing Rohl’s chronology and Bietak’s findings, Mahoney noted that the archaeology at Avaris suggests that the Israelites may have settled there and grew in number, “and then they become enslaved, or something happens to them because they become impoverished. And then we start seeing these slave names, and we start seeing indications of them as there’s these slaves, Semitic slaves, in this area.”
“So the case was building for the narrative of the Bible … but the problem why people didn’t connect it is because it was earlier in Egypt’s time period [than traditionally thought]. But the sequence was there,” he said. “And eventually we see the exodus out of Egypt and then we see … this exodus in multiple places of these slaves. And Avaris is abandoned.”
READ: ‘Nefarious’ movie repeats Our Lady of Fatima’s urgent call to pray for poor sinners
Later in the episode, Mahoney discusses the latest installments of the Patterns of Evidence films, set to release May 15 and 17, dealing with the historic Mount Sinai.
Discussing a possibility that Jebel-el Lawz in Saudi Arabia could be the historic Mount Sinai, Mahoney said: “There’s water just pouring out, sort of dribbling out of this mountain. And the fact that there … looks like there are these, I think now but I’ve seen five of them, five of these circular stoned areas, along what could be a reservoir or a small lake, that this possibly was how the Israelites were able to maintain themselves with water, because the Bible says they were told to wash their clothes. Well, they’re in the desert. How in the world are they going to wash their clothes to prepare for God? There had to be a flow of water coming out.”
He continued:
And the fact that 3500 years ago at one of these mountains … That to me, especially at the scale of this particular water area, that’s one thing. The other one was a massive graveyard in the middle of what I would call nowhere, because … there’s no evidence of a large settlement, but there’s evidence of a massive graveyard. And so what does this gravel yard connect to?
Well, the Bible says that when Moses was up on the mountain … [the Israelites] get nervous and they decide to build their own God. And now [Moses] looks down and he sees thousands of people worshiping a golden calf. Just the very thing that God had told them not to do … and he throws the commandment[s] … and then he tells the Levites … to take a sword and kill anyone who is doing this. And that day, it says 3000 people were killed. Well, guess what? There is [an about] 14 to 15 football fields area of graves, of these stones that have been put up. And so people say, ‘Well, where did these people come from and why are they right near this mountain where all this stuff happened?’
And so the issue of the of this massive graveyard, the large possibility of a water reservoir and wells along with the other things that I’ve been interested in. That to me, I think then kind of pulls the pattern together. And that’s what this movie is trying to do.
Listen to this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show with Tim Mahoney below:
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