If you visit there you will notice that the drum is designed so that it can retract and basically sink into a hole down below where it is housed. Once it is lowered it is encased in a solid steel plated enclosure which is hermetically sealed and virtually impenetrable. This seems like an odd thing to do, but there is a purpose to it. This drum is to lower into this well and be sealed in the event of a nuclear attack upon Jerusalem. At that point, no matter what happens to the city, the document itself will survive the blast.
Now this may seem like a rather extreme thing to do for this particular book, but Jews consider Isaiah's book to be especially important because it is the text of the “sealed book.”
Isaiah is the first prophet to really speak of the great Armageddon. In Isaiah 29:1-10 we are told:
1 Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David settled! Add year to year and let your cycle of festivals go on. 2 Yet I will besiege Ariel; she will mourn and lament, she will be to me like an altar hearth. 3 I will encamp against you all around; I will encircle you with towers and set up my siege works against you. 4 Brought low, you will speak from the ground; your speech will mumble out of the dust. Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth; out of the dust your speech will whisper. 5 But your many enemies will become like fine dust, the ruthless hordes like blown chaff. Suddenly, in an instant, 6 the LORD Almighty will come with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire. 7 Then the hordes of all the nations that fight against Ariel, that attack her and her fortress and besiege her, will be as it is with a dream, with a vision in the night- 8 as when a hungry man dreams that he is eating, but he awakens, and his hunger remains; as when a thirsty man dreams that he is drinking, but he awakens faint, with his thirst unquenched. So will it be with the hordes of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion. 9 Be stunned and amazed, blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not from wine, stagger, but not from beer. 10 The LORD has brought over you a deep sleep: He has sealed your eyes (the prophets); he has covered your heads (the seers).
This is some rather graphic imagery that clearly looks like Isaiah is prophesying about a nuclear holocaust. People becoming like fine dust and blown away like chaff sounds a lot like those pictures they show of nuclear bombs being detonated and houses and trees disintegrating before your eyes.
This was of great interest to Drosnan, but his interest became more intensified by the next verse in this chapter. Isaiah 29:11 tells us:
11 For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say to him, "Read this, please," he will answer, "I can't; it is sealed."
