In Orthodox Holy Scripture, following the Septuagint Old Testament, we read in 2 Maccabees 2:

“One finds in the records that the prophet Jeremiah ordered those who were being deported to take some of the fire [note: from the altar, and the liquid associated with the fire, see 2 Maccabees 1], as has been mentioned, ² and that the prophet, after giving them the law, instructed those who were being deported not to forget the commandments of the Lord or to be led astray in their thoughts on seeing the gold and silver statues and their adornment [note: in exile in Babylon]. ³ And with other similar words he exhorted them that the law should not depart from their hearts. ⁴ It was also in the same document that the prophet, having received an oracle, ordered that the tent and the ark should follow with him and that he went out to the mountain where Moses had gone up and had seen the inheritance of God. ⁵ Jeremiah came and found a cave dwelling, and he brought there the tent and the ark and the altar of incense; then he sealed up the entrance. ⁶ Some of those who followed him came up intending to mark the way but could not find it. ⁷ When Jeremiah learned of it, he rebuked them and declared, ‘The place shall remain unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy. ⁸ Then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will appear, as they were shown in the case of Moses and as Solomon asked that the place should be specially consecrated.’

“⁹ It was also made clear that, being possessed of wisdom, Solomon offered sacrifice for the dedication and completion of the temple. ¹⁰ Just as Moses prayed to the Lord and fire came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifices, so also Solomon prayed, and the fire came down and consumed the whole burnt offerings. ¹¹ And Moses said, ‘They were consumed because the purification offering had not been eaten.’ ¹² Likewise Solomon also kept the eight days. ¹³ The same things are reported in the records and in the memoirs of Nehemiah and also that he founded a library and collected the books about the kings and prophets and the writings of David and letters of kings about votive offerings. ¹⁴ In the same way Judas also collected all the books that had been lost on account of the war that had come upon us, and they are in our possession. ¹⁵ So if you have need of them, send people to get them for you. ¹⁶ Since, therefore, we are about to celebrate the purification, we write to you. You will do well if you celebrate these days. ¹⁷ It is God who has saved all his people and has returned the inheritance to all and the kingship and the priesthood and the consecration, ¹⁸ as he promised through the law. We have hope in God that he will soon have mercy on us and will gather us from everywhere under heaven into his holy place, for he has rescued us from great evils and has purified the place.”

The hiding of the Ark, safeguarded in advance of the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians c. 4923 AM (586 BC in Western dating), is dramatic. Yet Jeremiah’s prophecy, as recorded in the account, finds fulfillment in the Orthodox Christian understanding after the Resurrection of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ that the Ark and the Tabernacle have been fully realized in the Church as the Body of Christ and the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. In fact, the Ark and the Tabernacle find living symbolic fulfillment on the Altar Table of each Orthodox Church around the earth, behind the Iconostasis, even in our humble rural mission parish in Northern Appalachia. There is the Gospel book, the fulfilling of the Law and the Prophets represented in the Tablets in the original Ark. There is the Tabernacle housing Holy Gifts that are the Body and Blood of Christ. There is the Cross fulfilling the Rod of Aaron. The Candlestand also marks the fulfilling of the same.

In Church Tradition, the Ark in the Old Testament is known as a type of the Most Holy Mother of God, within whose womb dwelt our Lord Jesus Christ in the Incarnation. The Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrew teaches how the full spiritual reality of the Ark and Tabernacle, following the Incarnation and he New Testament, realizes and supersedes the physical holy artifacts of Old Testament Law. Moreover, the Revelation to the Evangelist John, in Chapter 11, records the appearance of the Ark and the Tabernacle amid the upheavals associated with the latter days preceding the Second Coming of Jesus Christ: “And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.” (Rev. 11:19)

Of this, the ancient commentator St. Andrew of Caesarea wrote (as quoted by Archbishop Averky in his commentary on the Apocalypse):

“By the opening of heaven and the appearance of the ark, in the interpretation of St. Andrew, is indicated ‘the revelation of good things prepared for the saints, which things, according to the Apostle, are hidden in Christ, in Whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9). These things will be revealed at the same time that the lawless and impious ones will be sent frightful voices, lightnings, thunderings, and hail; the change of the present world in the earthquake symbolizes the torments of Gehenna'” (St. Andrew, chapter 33).

The glory of the Lord being revealed at the time of the re-appearance of the Ark, prophesied by Jeremiah, suggests the Incarnation and the full unveiling of the uncreated energies of God at the Transfiguration and in the Church at Pentecost and subsequently. This makes efforts to find the Ark as just a physical object an idolatrous dead end. Nazi-related occult efforts in the 20th century sought it unsuccessfully. British imperialists earlier unsuccessfully tried to find the Ark in Ireland’s Hill of Tara and failed, following heretical beliefs about the Lost Tribes of Israel in the British Isles. Monophysites in Ethiopia long have held to the belief that the Ark is kept there, perhaps originally brought to Egypt by Jeremiah before his martyrdom there, thence through Nubia to Ethiopia.

But Holy Christian Tradition relates the revelation of the Ark to the Incarnation and the Holy Orthodox Church. The time and the manner of re-appearance of the Ark in the end times remains a mystery, in which we should say, following our Lord, neither “lo here” or “lo there,” but remain attentive and watchful within the noetic life of His Church. Learning in Christ to love our neighbor more than ourselves as He charged in His New Commandment, we lose ourself in Him, in the Eucharist and the uncreated energies of God.

Jeremiah relays this prophecy about the Ark, related to the Church, in the scriptural book that bears his name:

“Turn, ye children that have revolted, saith the Lord; for I will rule over you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you in to Sion: and I will give you shepherds after my heart [note: as in the Apostles and their anointed successors], and they shall certainly tend you with knowledge. And it shall come to pass that when ye are multiplied and increased upon the land, saith the Lord, in those days they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the Holy One of Israel: it shall not come to mind; it shall not be named; neither shall it be visited; nor shall this be done any more. In those days and at that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; and all the nations shall be gathered to it: and they shall not walk any more after the imaginations of their evil heart. In those days the house of Juda, shall come together to the house of Israel, and they shall come, together, from the land of the north, and from all the countries, to the land, which I caused their fathers to inherit” (Jeremiah 3:15-18).