It was a shocking discovery and a victory for Biblical scholars – a fragment of the gospel of Mark found inside a mummy mask in Egypt. However, the discovery has atheists up in arms, and you won’t believe why.

The discovery was made in Egypt, where mummy masks were made out of recycled papyrus. When taken apart via a delamination process, the masks can yield up to 12 different fragments of antiquarian writing.

According to the Blaze, one of the masks yielded a fragment of the gospel of Mark from 80 A.D. – the earliest known fragment of that book of the Bible and putting it quite close to the life of Christ. This also goes a long way to disproving the claim that the gospels were literary inventions that took place centuries after the life of Jesus.

“To have a first-century witness to the text of the New Testament is unprecedented. That a fragment of Mark was found in Egypt is even more astonishing,” wrote Boyce College professor Denny Burk.

“That would seem to require that the original was probably penned decades before.”

Shendong Church in Zhejiang was forcibly demolished on April 28th in continuation of the province-wide "Three Rectifications and One Demolition" campaign. Authorities reportedly claimed that the land on which the church was built belonged to the government. The church had previously submitted requests to the local religious affairs bureau and other government agencies, requesting that their location be approved and finalized. However, the contacted governing officials never responded to these requests.

Following the destruction, the church's pastor then specifically contacted the government official who was in charge of the demolition and the church site's subsequent relocation. When informed that the government needed two months to find and approve a new gathering site, the church demanded that the government find a new site immediately. For the time being, the church has been meeting in a nearby clubhouse.

The demolition occurred on the one-year anniversary of the demolition of Sanjiang Church, a mega-church in Zhejiang that was one of the first major church demolitions in the persecution campaign.