There are two “arks” that have significance in Scripture:  Noah’s Ark and the Ark of the Covenant.  Both have allusions to Yeshua the Messiah. (Yeshua is the short form of Yehoshua.)

NOAH’S ARK

Have you heard the references or pictures to the Messiah being compared to the Ark of Noah’s day in the Book of Genesis?  The sinner is admonished to “Get on the Ark!”,  meaning “Get saved through Christ!”  There is safety in this Ark of Christ. Yeshua the Messiah is our blessed hope. 

MATT 24:38 For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39 and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 40 Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. 

In the OT,  as this prophet foretold, the righteous are taken!

Isaiah 57:1 

The righteous perishes,
And no man takes it to heart;
Merciful men are taken away,
While no one considers
That the righteous is taken away from evil.
2 He shall enter into peace;
They shall rest in their beds,
Each one walking in his uprightness.

This ship or Ark is also mentioned in Peter’s epistles:

1 Peter 3:18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, 19 by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, 20 who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.

Eight is the number of new beginnings.  This was a new beginning for Noah and his family.

2 Peter 2:5 and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly;

The “world of the ungodly” is that the human DNA was mixed with the fallen angels as recorded in Scripture.  From Genesis 6:9:  “… Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations…”

But God promised never to flood the whole earth again and we have His promise in the rainbow, God’s unique covenant with man.  The next time the earth is destroyed it will be with fire, but after the Millennial reign of Christ. (There will be a partial burning as Babylon burns before the Millennial but the final destruction is in 2 Peter 3:11-12 and then there is a new earth and new heavens.)

But there is another type of Ark...  

THE ARK OF HIS COVENANT

The Lord instructed Moses to build this Ark in Exodus 25:10-22.  It is also called the Ark of the Testimony, for it had the tablets that Moses received with the written law. 

EXO 25:16 And you shall put into the ark the Testimony which I will give you.

The Ark also signified for the Israelites the Presence of the LORD as we shall see:

THE MERCY SEAT  

On the top of the Ark, there was a Mercy Seat or an Atonement Cover “of pure gold”. 

HEB 9:5a NIV – Above the ark were the cherubim of the Glory, overshadowing the atonement cover…

Romans 3:25 CSB “God presented Him as the mercy seat by His blood…”
Because Christ has forgiven our sins, past, present, and future, we now have access into His precious Presence!   

“Christ is the mercy-seat of the New Covenant. It is upon Him, as it were, that the divine grace, drawn forth by His own atoning blood, resides.” Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers

This is most important in the OT ceremony of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  The term (H3727) “kapporeth” is translated “propitiatory” or “mercy seat”. It symbolizes a “cover over our sin”.

On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest went into the Holy of Holies and offered sacrifices for him and for the nation unto the LORD. Sin and guilt were thusly removed from God’s people and placed on the back of a goat (scapegoat) and sent off into the desert to Azazel. This ceremony symbolized the forgiveness of sin through God’s mercy, but only for one year. (See Leviticus 16.)

This is from the New Testament:

HEB 10:3 But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins…. 12 But this Man [Yeshua], after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, 13 from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. 14 For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

THE CHERUBIM

On the Ark were images of two golden cherubim facing each other, with outstretched wings.  Some say, that the two angels on the Ark were an allusion to the two angels when Christ was resurrected.

JOHN 20:12 “And she [Mary Magdalene] saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.”

These images of the angels were done according to the LORD’s pattern:

HEB 8:5 who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, “See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”

THE SEVENTH TRUMPET

The Ark is seen during the Seventh Trumpet.

REV 11:15 Then the seventh angel sounded [the shofar/trumpet]: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!”

Just a few verses later, in the Book of Revelation, the Ark is seen!

REV 11:19 Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple. And there were lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail. 

This ark may be an allusion again to Noah’s ark in Matthew 24, in which the people of God were taken, since at this point in the Book of Revelation, the believing overcomers would have been resurrected into the safety of heaven while the Day of the LORD’s wrath is going on in the earth.

(There are seven different visions in Revelation so it is towards the end of the endtimes. The “resurrection of the just” takes place during the Feast of Trumpets. )

YESHUA HaMASHIACH IS THE TEMPLE 

This Scripture reads “and the ark of His covenant was seen in His [God’s] temple.” The Ark represented God’s Presence and it is seen in His heavenly temple. Yeshua the Messiah is the temple yet true Christians are also. When Yeshua proclaimed, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me,” He was saying He is the temple. Jewish people were familiar with these terms of the temple: the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE .  

Yeshua is the ONLY WAY into the spirtual temple, where one could meet with LORD Adonai. There is one WAY (Outer Court) in to the TEMPLE. The Inner Court was called the TRUTH. When we meet with God He leads us into all TRUTH! And the Holy of Holies, the third part of the temple, is the LIFE.

However, additionally, the temple of God are true believers who have been “born-again” by His Spirit! Christ made this possible! 

1COR 3:16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

1 Peter 2:5 you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Yeshua, Israelites, and early Christians referred to the temple also as the house of God. See Matthew 21:13.

“The Ark of His Covenant was seen in His temple.” 

Exodus 25:22 And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the Testimony, about everything which I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel.

The Ark is seen in the temple!   We are His temple!  He is there in the midst of us.  We also have spiritually the contents of what was in the Ark in us as well:

Hebrews 9:4 which had the golden censer and the ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which were the golden pot that had the manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant;

We have the manna which is Yeshua, the Bread of LIFE.

JOHN 6:35 And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” 

We have the “rod that budded” which is Yeshua, our High Priest, and we are also called to be priests.

REV 1:6a and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father…..  

We have the “tablets of the covenant” or the Commandments of God. We keep the Word of God.  And this, in Revelation 11:19, is after we are by His side and in His Presence so we will be wholly obedient to His Word by His Spirit within.  

THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD

The Ark of the Covenant signified the Presence of the LORD as we can see in these passages.

JOSH 3:6 Then Joshua spoke to the priests, saying, “Take up the ark of the covenant and cross over before the people.” So they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people…. 11 Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is crossing over before you into the Jordan…. 13 And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, that the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off, the waters that come down from upstream, and they shall stand as a heap.”

And so the Israelites crossed over into their Promised Land! The Presence of the LORD was with them!

The Presence in the Ark was also there when Jericho fell!

JOSH 6:6 Then Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the Lord.”…15 But it came to pass on the seventh day that they rose early, about the dawning of the day, and marched around the city seven times in the same manner. On that day only they marched around the city seven times. 16 And the seventh time it happened, when the priests blew the trumpets, that Joshua said to the people: “Shout, for the Lord has given you the city!

It is no coincidence that this was seventh day when the Joshua’s crew blew the shofars and we are going to see happen too when the Seventh Trumpet sounds!

This is from a note from “JESUS, THE ARK, AND THE DAY OF ATONEMENT” by Nicholas P. Lunn 

15 This being one of only two explicit references to the ark of the covenant in the entire NT … It would seem that the reference to the ark in Rev 11:19 is not purely arbitrary, but relates the seventh apocalyptic trumpet concerning the fall of the kingdoms of the world to the fall of Jericho at the blowing of the trumpet on the seventh day (Joshua 6), an event in which the ark plays a prominent role …

The Ark, which signified the Presence of the LORD, went before and the “wall came a tumblin’ down!”  Therefore, as Jericho, the City of the Moon,  was taken by the Joshua and the Israelites, so the world system will be overtaken by Yeshua with His faithful saints.  Both Joshua/Yehoshua(H3091) and Yeshua/Yehoshua mean “the LORD is salvation”!  

“The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!”

Note: The Ark is not Mary. Was Mary there in Joshua 3:6 when the Israelites crossed the Jordan River? Was it Mary that circled around Jericho and caused the walls to fall? The Ark is NOT Mary/Miriam – but this “FAKE Mary” would want you to believe that – because this “FAKE Mary” is a usurper, trying to take the Glory of God for herself!