Posted on 05/07/2008 2:06:53 PM PDT by big'ol_freeper
Within the unimaginable depths of the universe there is a small family of worlds circling about a star we call the Sun; it is just a single star among the billions upon billions which are shining in the cosmos. Against the awesome backdrop of the infinite blackness of space, our world is just another planet; nothing more than an insignificant speck on the cosmological scale of things, but it is our home, and as of yet we have found no other planets which are remotely like Earth. The history of our world is a story which is still largely incomplete. Just a few centuries ago, the most learned historians knew virtually nothing about events beyond 3,000 years ago. These students of the past had a surplus of legends about the origin of man and his world, but the fables and myths were seemingly at variance with the fossilized bones of dinosaurs and apelike beings. These archaeological finds clashed severely with the beliefs and religions of people who took the Hebrew Bible's account of Genesis as a literal authentic history of the world. If prehistoric monsters roamed the Earth in the past, why were they not mentioned in the Book of Genesis? The halcyon tales of the Garden of Eden only mention Adam and Eve; there is no reference to the now-extinct races of ape-men and men-apes such as the Neanderthals, the Cro Magnon people, and other sub-human anthropoids.
Despite the conflicting evidence of the fossil records, the Church attempted to circumvent the problem by seriously asserting that the Devil had maliciously fabricated the fossils of ancient plants and animals and had planted them in rocks to disprove the Biblical scriptures. In fact, by meticulous analysis of the Book of Genesis, the Archbishop of Armagh (1581-1656) even came to the conclusion that God had created the world at 9 am on October 23, 4004 BC! Some writers and thinkers have conjectured that there is a theological no-man's land where the Biblical view and scientific version of man's history can co-exist. One of the earliest attempts to reinterpret the books of the Old Testament as a terrestrial account of alien visitations can be found in Yezad, a 1922 science fiction novel by George Babcock. Babcock's sci-fi treatment of the Old Testament was branded by many as sacrilegious, while others thought his concept was preposterous.
In the early 1950s, the Old Testament was once again interpreted from a scientific angle by the distinguished academic and Freudian psychiatrist Immanuel Velikovsky. After his extensive researches into Israelite history, Velikovsky proposed that certain parts of the Bible's Old Testament were factual, and he offered many outrageous theories to describe Biblical events as misinterpretations of cosmic incidents. Velikovsky argued that Earth had been involved with a near-collision with Venus. The effects of this hypothetical planetary near-miss on the Earth's axis and rotational speed would have been responsible for the account in the Book of Joshua 10:12-13: 'The Sun stood still in the midst of Heaven and did not go down about a whole day.'
Why did Velikovsky think Venus was the culprit? Well, until the second millenium BC, that planet was not grouped by astronomers with the rest of the planets; it was in fact always described as a menacing comet-like body which was said to have rained fire down on the Earth in the past. The Aztecs called Venus 'the Star that smoked' and claimed that it once passed by the world blazing, and killed many people in its wake. The Peruvians called Venus 'Chaska' - which means wavy-haired. Strangely enough, the Greek myths tell how a blazing star named Phaeton almost destroyed the world with fire before being transformed into the planet Venus. The Jews also regarded Venus in a similar manner for some reason, and a passage in the Talmud states: 'Fire is hanging down from the planet Venus.' Venus - the nearest planet to ours - was also classed as a dangerous fire-spitting planet by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Arabs, Hindus, Chinese, and even the Samoans. Velikovsky strongly backed up his wandering planet hypothesis with more historical references to our nearest planetary neighbour in his controversial book, Worlds In Collision (1950), but predictably, the historians and astrophysicists ridiculed the work. The Biblical fundamentalists also attacked the book for equating the works of God as mere cosmic cataclysms. But other writers came along with even more controversial interpretations of the historical events which have allegedly inspired the world's religions and cultures.
In 1967 a book called Chariot of the Gods? was published, and within the space of five years it had become a best-seller in 38 countries and was translated into 26 languages. The author of the book was Erich Von Daniken, the managing director of a Swiss 5-Star Hotel. The claims made by Von Daniken in his work were bold and blasphemous. Von Daniken had been educated at the College of St-Michel in Fribourg, where even as a student, he had occupied all of his spare time studying ancient holy writings. His lengthy research led him to the following conclusions: Humanoid aliens from a remote galaxy had visited the Earth around 10,000 years ago, apparently after an intergalactic war. These 'sons of the stars' created the human race in their own image by tinkering with the genes of the primates. The alien visitors so overawed their creations with their far superior technology that they were worshipped as gods. Evidence, such as artefacts and relics of the visiting ancient astronauts have been uncovered by archaeologists but unrecognised. Many of the fabulous stories in the Bible and other sacred books are actually accounts of the ancient spacemen intervening in human affairs.
Von Daniken was heavily criticized by theologians, archaeologists, social anthropologists, cultural historians, astronomers and astrophysicists, but his first book sold five and a half million copies and captured the imaginations of people the world over. Chariots of the Gods? spawned a deluge of books with the same theme of ancient astronauts, many of which became bestsellers. Today, Erich Von Daniken still holds dearly to his beliefs, although he admits there were some errors in his books. In 1985, he wrote a book about the errata of his works entitled, Did I Get It Wrong? and he even asked his readers to consider if he had misconceived the whole ancient astronauts theory in the first place.
Could there be at least a grain of truth in the claims of Von Daniken and the other writers who say God was an astronaut? Let us analyse the Bible in our quest for ancient spacemen. The Christian sacred book is actually a collection of books, divided into two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The former contains thirty-nine books (according to the Protestants), plus a supplement of fourteen books known as the Apocrypha. These are books of doubtful authority, but are included in the Greek (Septuagint) and Latin (Vulgate) versions of the Old Testament, but are usually viewed as non canonical or of little value by most Christians and Jews. The Old Testament was compiled during a period ranging from the 13th century to the first century BC. No original manuscripts have actually survived, and the present versions are based on two main sources: the Septuagint - a Greek translation made from the Hebrew in Alexandria in about 250 BC - and the Massoretic Text, which resulted from the collaborations of a group of Jewish scholars, beginning in the sixth century after Christ. This group of scholars assigned themselves to the task of preserving the Hebrew versions then available, and the Massoretic Text was finally finished at the end of the 10th century.
The Septuagint became the accepted Old Testament of the Christians, and the Massoretic Text became the Hebrew canon. There were, however, even more versions of the Old Testament; they were the Samaritan Pentateuch - fourth century BC text preserved by the Samaritan community - and a Latin translation by St Jerome (begun in 382 AD) called the Vulgate, which is the authorized Roman Catholic version.
The New Testament of the Bible was most probably written in Greek during the first century. Without a doubt, the New Testament is laced with mistakes, mostly introduced by the scribes, although, none of them are significant enough to affect the doctrinal essence of the texts. If we take the Bible literally, as it is intended to be taken, according to Christians, then its scriptures are open to some intriguing interpretations. In Genesis, we are told that:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters...
Further on another passage reads:
And God said, Let the Earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the Earth: and it was so. And the Earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
If we are to interpret the aforementioned passages not as some sacred account of creation, but as a primitive allegorical interpretation of an real higher intelligence transforming a cratered, barren planet into an oasis, we would see striking parallels with the far-sighted plans the scientists of today have for 'terraforming' planets in out solar system which are at present too hostile for us to survive on. The late astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan once put forward an ingenious plan for terraforming (making a planet hospitable) the currently infernal world of Venus. Sagan calculated that if we bombarded Venus with 1000 rocket-loads of blue-green algae, some of the hardy one-celled organisms would reproduce in the upper atmosphere before crashing down to the surface, which has a temperature of 900 degrees Fahrenheit. This incredibly hot temperature is nothing to some algae that thrive in boiling hot springs on Earth. Rocket-loads of the tough algae cells released into the thick cloud cover continually over a period of years would ultimately allow a flourishing colony of cells that would convert the carbon-dioxide in the Venusian atmosphere into oxygen. After several hundred years, enough oxygen would be formed on Venus to cool down the planet and vastly reduce the Venusian greenhouse effect. This in turn would allow the significant amounts of water vapour which is known to exist in the atmosphere of Venus to fall as rain. The end product would be a cycle of rainfall and the formation of rivers and lakes on the planet. Sagan's plans are not pipe dreams; computer simulations have determined that a terraforming programme for Venus is entirely feasible if enough time, money and technology is provided for the project, which would literally reap astronomical profits. A transformed Venus would not only become a second Earth for humanity to colonise, it would present unprecedented territorial ownership disputes among the nations of Earth.
As Venus has no tectonic plate system like Earth, it would be earthquake free. Secondly, the Venusian day lasts 243 Earth days; that would be 243 days of continual sunshine in the planet's tropical belt, which entails obvious advantages over Earth's tourist industry. Venus would become the ultimate retreat for this planet's millionaires, and the ultra-novel extraterrestrial holiday location would require a sizeable workforce from Earth. The prolonged period of sunshine on Venus would probably necessitate subterranean or air-conditioned dwellings where artificial night could be simulated. Another possibility at stimulating a localised form of night could work by orbiting inflatable reflective myelin mirrors around the planet. The shadows of these mirrors falling on the surface of Venus would create an oasis of darkness which the inhabitants would experience as a solar eclipse effect. Alternatively, perhaps anyone tiring of the eight-month day could even journey to the dark side of Venus, where the stars would be on view for as long as there were clear skies. Of course, no one is entirely sure what resources lie beneath the Venusian crust, but as the planet is almost a twin of the Earth in size and gravity, we must surmise that there will be radioactive ores, gold, silver and many other precious metals and minerals present. This brings us back to the problem of who would own these resources. When NASA landed its first astronauts on the Moon, the Soviet Union, China and many other nations frowned at America planting the tinfoil flag of the Stars and Stripes in the lunar soil. The other nations of the world argued that a united banner of humanity should have been planted there instead. This suggestion outraged NASA and the American government, which had spent billions of dollars and lost a number of astronauts in order to reach the Moon. If an American company as successful as Microsoft financed the Venus terraforming venture, there would be similar squabbles amongst the Terran leaders of our much-hyped 'Global Village'. In fact, it is highly likely that wars would rage over the possession of the new world. Perhaps even a war of independence for the new Venusians who wish to become autonomous and free from the Earth governments. Going back to the Biblical texts of Genesis; is it possible that a similar war over planetary possession was fought when the gods transformed the Earth from a lifeless sphere 'without form and void' into the Garden of Eden? Curiously, American Charles Fort (1874-1932) the great student of the unexplained and collector extraordinaire of bizarre newspaper clippings and reports, once made a profound statement in 1919 in his Book of the Damned, an incredible examination of the holes and contradictions in our scientific understanding of the universe. Fort wrote:
I think we are property. I should say we belong to something. That once upon a time, this earth was No-Man's land, that other worlds explored and colonised here, and fought among themselves for possession, but that now it's owned by something. That something owns this earth - all others warned off. Did Fort hit on a truth? It would explain all the tales in Apocrypha and other religious works about the ancient conflict called 'The War In Heaven' which was fought by dissenting factions of angles, led by rogue Archangel Lucifer against his master, Yahweh, the God who made a lifeless world fertile and created Homo Sapiens to tend to his Garden of Eden. In the Book of Isaiah 14:12, it says of Lucifer:
O Shining star, son of morning, how you have fallen from the heavens... For you said in your heart, I will go up to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God...
Most people equate the name 'Lucifer' with Satan, however the Bible implies that this is not the case, and the name Lucifer is only mentioned in one passage of the Old Testament.
According to the Book of Job 26:11-13, when Lucifer, 'the Boastful Angel' and his followers rebelled, Yahweh destroyed their dwelling places a place in the heavens called 'Rahab', which was reduced by God to 'stones of fire'. The Book of Enoch hints that Rahab was an actual world in the sky which God smashed. In some accounts, Rahab is curiously connected with the mythical planet Phaeton, which was said to have been destroyed by a catastrophe millions of years ago. Is there any physical evidence that Rahab once existed?
Each planet in our solar system is somewhere between 1.3 and 2.0 times as far from the Sun as the next nearer planet. The one exception in this numeric relationship is the fifth planet Jupiter; it is 3.4 times as far from the Sun as Mars. This inconsistent gap puzzled astronomers for years, especially after Uranus was discovered in 1781. It was quite obvious that a planet was missing which should have been orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers scanned this gap in the orbits for years, hoping to discover the absent planet, but in 1801, the first fragment of the missing planet was discovered by stargazers. It was a carbonaceous chunk of rock, 620 miles in diameter, and it was named Ceres. By 1807, more enormous fragments were spotted, and as the century progressed, it became clear that there were thousands of chunks of something spread in a belt around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Today, it is known that there are at least 100,000 asteroids in the belt, and the debate still rages over just what the asteroids are the remnants of. Some astronomers think they are leftover material from the birth of the solar system which never formed into a planet, while others think the asteroids are the remains of a world which exploded in the distant past. What force could destroy an entire planet? Cometary collisions, and even geological catastrophes could have been responsible. Water from the planet's oceans seeping down through faults in the crust to the core would be sufficient to generate a super-heated blast of steam that would blow a planet into oblivion. This scenario was witnessed on a small scale here on Earth in 1883 when seawater seeped into the active volcano on the East Indian island Krakatoa. The ensuing blast destroyed the island, killed 36,000 people, and hurled fragments over an area of 300,000 square miles.
The evidence for the demolished world of Rahab could then, be the hundreds of thousands of chunks floating about between Mars and Jupiter, but in the search for an extraterrestrial angle on the Bible, we must now turn our attention to the chronicled events which allegedly happened here on Earth.
One thing which does seem absolutely certain in the Old and New Testaments, is that something unearthly caused a stir in the Middle East, in the time of Moses and in the period Jesus was on Earth. let us begin with the Old Testament. Whatever way we look at it, something that was literally not of this world commanded Moses to lead the Israelites out of the bondage of the Pharaoh and through the wilderness to the Promised Land. It all began when Moses was eighteen years old, according to the Talmud. The sight of the wickedness being inflicted upon his people by the Egyptians moved Moses to tears, and it culminated in him killing an overseer who was beating a Hebrew labourer. Moses was saved from execution by an angel and transported instantly to Ethiopia where he fought as a general. Soon after the death of Kikanus, Moses was crowned king and Queen Adonith became his wife. However, Moses abdicated and journeyed to Midian, where he married Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro, and for forty years lived as a shepherd. Scriptures then give a strange account about Moses's encounter with an unearthly entity:
Moses was minding the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, Priest of Midian. He left the flock along the side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in the flame of the burning bush. Moses noticed that although the bush was on fire, it was not itself being burned up; so he said to himself "I must go across to see this wonderful sight. Why does not the bush burn away?" When the Lord saw that Moses had turned aside to look, he called out to him out of the bushes "Moses, Moses." And Moses answered "Yes I am here." God said "Come no nearer; take off your sandals; the place where you are standing is holy ground."
This passage has been interpreted by researchers looking for scriptural spaceships as perhaps some account of bush silhouetted against a lit-up spacecraft which had landed on the secluded mountain. The 'Lord' warning Moses to keep his distance has also been construed as the amplified intercom voice of the captain or pilot of the landed ship advising Moses to keep out of range of harmful radiation emanating from the craft.
The Lord told Moses to deliver the Israelites out of bondage and lead them to the Promised Land 'flowing with milk and honey'.
Aided by his elder brother, Aaron, Moses finally led the 600,000 Israelites out of thraldom and embarked on the epic forty years of wandering to Canaan. In the Book of Exodus XIII,21 it is written:
And Yahveh went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night. He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.
The pillar has been the subject of much speculation to scholars, critics and theologians over the centuries. One Biblical scholar, M .Daniel-Rops, asserts that the pillar of cloud - the visible sign of Divine Presence in the eyes of the Hebrews - was nothing more than a side effect of the 'Qadim', a sirocco-like wind of Arabia, which raised opaque clouds of spiralling dust. But Mr Daniel-Rops neglects to explain how this whirlwind of sand kept going for forty years, and how it became highly luminous and fiery upon nightfall. What we can assume, without the risk of being sacrilegious, is that the pillar of cloud and light was not of this Earth, and definitely not a product of weather conditions. Something from above was intervening in the affairs of the Hebrews, and it was not some mass hallucination affecting the thousands of Israelites and the Egyptian nation; something real and tangible was taking place.
The Pharaoh was well aware of the reality of the Hebrew Lord when he decided to send his cavalry and chariots after the fleeing Israelites. Faced with the obstacle of the Red Sea, Moses could lead his persecuted people no further, but at the Lord's behest, Moses suddenly stretched out his hand towards the river, and the waters parted. A tremendous wall of seawater moved off to the right, and another water-wall roared off to the left, exposing a vast tract of dried seabed stretching from one shore to the next. Moses and his people fled across the dry path to the safety of the other side, but when the Egyptian army tried to follow them across the seabed of the Red Sea, the water came thundering back down on top of them and they were drowned.
No natural phenomenon can account for the parting of the Red Sea, but if we are open-minded enough to entertain the hypothesis that extraterrestrials were responsible, we could imagine some potent antigravity forces pushing back the waters. We can already manipulate liquids at a distance with electrostatic forces. Many computer printers utilise this affect by using electrical fields to manoeuvre jets of charged ink around paper. If you let a thin stream of water run from a tap, then comb you hair and place the comb inches from this stream, the static electricity in the comb will actually bend the flow. If the static charge was greater, the water would flow at right angles, and if the electricity was charged further by a Van de Graff generator, you would be able to draw up gallons of water from a swimming pool. To part the Red Sea would take millions of watts of power, but that would easily be expendable to a space faring race. Two more incidents mentioned in Exodus give the impression that something akin to a spaceship landed on Mount Sinai:
And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the Mount; and the Lord called Moses up to the Mount; and Moses went up.
Also, we read:
And it came to pass on the third day in the morning that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled, And Moses brought forth people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the nether part of the Mount. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke because Yahveh descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole Mount quaked greatly.
Scripture then records that Moses advances towards the landing of Yahveh, but is given a stern warning by the Lord not to let anyone near the landing site. Only Moses is allowed to proceed. Yahveh says to the leader and prophet: 'And thou shall set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves that ye go not up into the Mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the Mount shall be surely put to death: there shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man it shall not live.'
Intriguingly, after an undefined period of time has elapsed, Yahveh lifts his exclusion zone from around the mountain, and Moses is allowed to take Aaron and seventy elders with him as he goes up to get a closer look at the mysterious cloud-pillar, although they all maintain a respectful distance from the supernatural sight. But then they see the awe-inspiring figure of Yahveh:
And they saw the God of Israel and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone...
Standing on a blue scintillating platform, they actually see the elusive but powerful God who co-ordinated the Exodus of the Jews after sending ten plagues against Egypt, the last of which resulted in the death of the Egyptian first-born (and may have only affected the Pharaoh's family). The celestial deity instructs Moses to construct a large tent of specific dimensions with the aid of the craftsmen in the encampment. The Hebrew lawgiver was told that the tent would be a 'Dwelling Place' for Yahveh and would also serve as a rendezvous where Moses and Aaron could meet with the extraterrestrial host. The specialized enclosure, also known as the Tent of Reunion, later served as the shelter of one of the most enigmatic objects in history: the Ark of the Covenant.
The Ark of the Covenant was an ornate chest of acacia wood which accompanied the Israelites throughout their nomadic wanderings. The Ark contained Aaron's rod, a pot of manna, and the broken stone tablets of the Decalogue - or Ten Commandments. It was 2.5 cubits (3 ft 9 ins) in length and 1.5 cubits (2 ft 3 ins) in height, and was carried by poles at the longs sides. Bezaleel, a Judahite artisan who was highly skilled at working in metal, wood and stone, was the principal architect of the Ark, but it was built to plans revealed to him by God, not to his own designs. The instructions imparted from Yahveh were very intriguing indeed. The poles used to carry the Ark were to be made of acacia and overlaid with gold leaf. In order to transport the Ark, these poles were to be carefully inserted into specially made receiving rings mounted on the sides of the chest. The poles were to remain in the rings at the sides of the Ark and never to be removed. The instructions for transporting the Ark of the Covenant were equally specific. Only the Kohathites - a clan of Levi - were allowed to carry the Ark and the holy things associated with the tabernacle. God warned that anyone else who touched those things would meet a swift death. What potent power did this Ark contain to be so jealously guarded? It was soon discovered why there were so many precautions regarding the handling of the Ark; as it was being transported by oxen, the beasts of burden stumbled, an a man named Uzzah who was not a Kohathnite or of the clan Levi - instinctively reached out to steady the Ark in case it toppled off the cart - and he was struck down dead by a tremendous bolt of energy (2 Samuel 6:7). The religious interpretation of this tragic event is that God smote Uzzah for being disobedient to his conditions, but one freethinking French writer, Robert Charroux, has conjectured that the Ark of the Covenant seems suspiciously like some high-voltage condenser which may have been a part of apparatus for communicating with the heavenly Yahveh. Erich von Daniken has also opted for this startling possibility, and the idea was also partly used in the 1981 Spielberg film, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The fate of the Ark is not known. Some scholars have concluded that it was captured by the Babylonians in 587 BC, when the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple was completed by Nebuchadnezzar. Yet, for some unknown reason, the Ark was not recorded in the list of the Babylonians' stolen booty. The current theory is that the Ark is in Ethiopia, because of an old legend, which goes as follows. The Queen of Sheba once visited King Solomon and was highly impressed by his wisdom (that is mentioned in the Book of Kings). She had an affair with him and when she returned to her nation, the Queen discovered she was having Solomon's child. The queen subsequently gave birth to a son, who was called Menelik, meaning son of the wise one. Upon adulthood, Menelik travelled to Israel to seek his father, who welcomed him with honour. Solomon gave so much attention to his illegitimate son, the elders complained and demanded that Menelik should return to Ethiopia. Solomon agreed, but only on the condition that all of the elder's oldest sons would accompany Menelik. The elders had to agree with the King, and Azarius, the oldest son of Zadok, the high priest of Israel, went to Ethiopia with Menelik - after stealing the sacred Ark of the Covenant. When Menelik reached Ethiopia, Azarius revealed the Ark, but Menelik believed that the theft would not have been successful without God's consent. And so, it is said that to this day, the Ark of the Covenant is under lock and key in the Church of St Mary of Zion in Axum. Should a thorough investigation ever get underway and successfully trace the Ark, it will be interesting to see if it is just an acacia chest - or something more hi-tech.
In other sections of the Bible there are other fascinating descriptions of fantastic events which have parallels with the modern UFO era. One apparent close encounter with a craft from the sky takes place in the Book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was one of the Jews deported to Babylon during the first exile of 597 BC. His call to be a prophet came in Babylon and his entire prophetic ministry was carried out there. By the River of Babylon - the Khobar - Ezekiel was sitting, in a sad mood, on the 'fifth day of the fourth month of the fifth year since the captivity' (the year 593 BC) when he suddenly saw what he assumed to be a 'chariot of Yahveh' coming towards him through the sky. In a state of shock the prophet stood transfixed, looking skywards at the strange craft:
And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire unfolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out the midsts thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midsts of the fire. Now as I beheld the living creatures behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of beryl [a greenish sheen] and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. When they went, they went upon their four sides, and they turned not when they went. As for their rings, they were so high they were dreadful, and their rings were full of eyes [portholes?]. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. Withersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.
Ezekiel goes on further to say that above the discs, there was another amazing object which he enigmatically alludes to as 'something that had the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Yahveh.' In earlier books of the Old Testament, the glory of Yahveh is always referred to as pillars of could or fire. Perhaps that was what Ezekiel was seeing above the landed object he could hardly describe in his limited language.
There are other accounts of possible UFOs in the Old Testament. The outstanding narrative concerning the adventure of Elijah when he is taken up by a 'whirlwind' - the same description Ezekiel uses for his UFO. Then there is the incredible tale related in a 4th century apocryphal work known as The Vision of Isaiah:
After taking Isaiah to Heaven, the angel was requested to return the prophet to earth. Isaiah said: 'Why so soon? I have only been here two hours.' The angel said: 'Not two hours, but thirty-two years...do not be sad, you will not be an old man.'
This seems like the well-documented effects of time-dilation. If Isaiah had been onboard a spacecraft capable of travelling near to the speed of light, time for him would run slower compared with someone back on Earth. Einstein was one of the first scientists to predict this curious effect, and in the 1970s, an experiment was carried out to prove the time-dilation theory. Two highly accurate atomic clocks were synchronized so they both had the same read-out, right down to the last decimal place. One clock was put on the supersonic airliner Concord, and flown from London to New York and back, while the other clock remained on the ground. When the read-outs from the clock on the ground and the travelled clock were compared, it was seen that the clock from Concord had somehow lost microseconds. In short, with a risk of oversimplification, the faster an object moves through space, the slower it moves through time compared to a stationary object. Simple extrapolation and a modicum of mathematics will tell us that if you were to embark on a two-hour trip into outer space at a speed close to the velocity of light, you would return to find your friends and family decades older than when you left, while you would only be two hours older. This complicated effect was only predicted by Relativity Theory in the 20th century, so how did the author of the Vision of Isaiah know about it?
“Grow some thicker skin” is a personal attack? I should have called you a whiney baby but I restrained myself.
Ooooh...that hurts. lol.
that’s more like it. :-)
The Flying Spaghetti Monster works in mysterious ways.
About the best description of a Bell H-13 helicopter I have ever seen.
This is what happens when the kiddies who should be taking the cookies off of the bottom shelf get too curious and knock over the whole cupboard.
The contents get spilled all over the floor and you can’t tell where they originally were. They get seen (and eaten) all out of order, sweet with savory and salty with hot.
The result is digestive confusion, a baaad tummy ache and the kiddie (author) who made the mess has to be sent to his room.
Hooah.
=
Absolutely. That's why it is so hilarious that Dawkins said it.
San Francisco.
Someone pointed out to me when I asked this question, that the fact that Adam and Eve were the FIRST people God created did not mean he never created any other people. Just the same as my being my parents’ first child does not mean my sisters are not their children.
Makes sense to me.
True enough, but it just goes to show how generations of people grew up thinking Adam and Eve being alone in the Garden of Eden meant they were the first, and only, people alive at the time.
Thanks.
Am at Dad’s in AZ.
May not keep up with all this . . . will see.
Exceedingly well put, imho.
bookmark for self
Thanks for the link.
Will check it out.
Still trying to feel, sense, discern, understand what I can say on such threads in the current context.
Thanks for the ping.
To be added to the 150 plus member aerial phenomenon ping list (ufo),please freepmail quix and/or lasvegasdave.
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