BIBLICAL EVIDENCE [2d]
Ironically, Erich von Däniken’s firm belief that Earth has been visited in the past by beings from other planets is entirely consistent with his belief in God and the Bible. It is merely a question of interpretation.
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“One has to understand, I was a very, very deep believer in God. By the way, I am still a believer in God. I never lost my God. But, for a young man, my God had to be almighty. My God would never need a vehicle in which to move around, a vehicle to go from point A to point B.” – Erich von Däniken (Author, Chariots of the Gods?) |
In what Christians refer to as the Old Testament, there are, in fact, several accounts of God and his Angels visiting the Earth. Sometimes these visitations are accompanied by tremendous noise and clouds of billowing smoke. In the Book of Ezekiel, for example, the prophet claims that he witnessed a visitation by Heavenly beings coming down from the skies aboard a fantastic flying machine. As far as von Däniken is concerned, it’s a highly detailed description of an alien sighting.
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“This is incredible. Ezekiel not only describes what he sees, he also describes what he hears. He describes the whole thing as being the splendidness of God.” – Erich von Däniken (Author, Chariots of the Gods?) |
The prophet also details several four-faced, winged creatures who appeared in the likeness of men and who traveled upon a gleaming, wheeled device.
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“Inside the splendors of God, there was something like a throne, and on this throne was a being sitting, looking like a human, in glittering clothes. And beneath it, he saw some vehicles. He saw some wings. He described the noise of the wings. He describes the noise of the wings with the thundering of a waterfall.” – Erich von Däniken (Author, Chariots of the Gods?) |
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“Ezekiel saw this wheel within a wheel. This sounds more high-tech than supernatural and we can’t suppose that, people 3,000 years ago would understand the difference between supernatural and high-tech.” – Rev. Barry H. Downing |
But what if there is more to Ezekiel’s Heavenly visions than the imaginative insights of a religious man? What if there was a scientific foundation for them?
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“I once had the opportunity of meeting and spending time and traveling with a gentleman by the name of Josef Blumrich. He was the Senior Chief Engineer of NASA, personally involved in the Mariner expedition to Mars. He was also in charge of the landing gear for the Mariner spaceship. And he told me himself that the idea of the design used for the Mariner spaceship that landed on Mars came to him from the reading of the biblical text in which there is talk about wheels within wheels. So, here you have another example of a person of curiosity who conceives of these ideas.” – Dr. Luis Navia |
The Spaceships of EzekielThe Spaceships of Ezekiel (1974) is a book by Josef F. Blumrich (March 17, 1913 – February 10, 2002) on a spaceship that was supposedly observed by the prophet Ezekiel, written while the author was chief of NASA’s systems layout branch of the program development office at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Blumrich went, after ufologists like Erich von Däniken had pointed to the possibility to interpret Ezekiel’s vision as a report about an extraterrestrial spacecraft, to disprove this hypothesis. A thorough examination, though, convinced him that Ezekiel had, in fact, seen a spacecraft, and occasioned him to fabricate detailed drawings of the latter. He stated the technology of the creators of the craft must have been a little bit higher developed than that of mankind of the present, and that he had seldom felt as delighted, satisfied, and fascinated by a full defeat. In The Spaceships of Ezekiel Blumrich asserts that Ezekiel’s account in the Bible was not a description of a meeting with God in a prophetic vision, but one of several encounters with ancient astronauts in a shuttlecraft from another planet. Blumrich analyzes six different translations of the Bible in conjunction with his experience in engineering and presents one possible version of Ezekiel’s visions of how God—described as riding in an elaborate vehicle capable to see, attended by angels—supposedly showed him the future and gave him various messages to deliver. In the appendices to the book he presents technical specifications of the hypothesized spacecraft. Blumrich also published an article on his belief, “The spaceships of the prophet Ezekiel”, in the UNESCO journal Impact of Science on Society.
Another biblical figure who continues to fascinate von Däniken is the character of Enoch.
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“Enoch is not part of the Bible. In the Bible, in the Old Testament, you find maybe just one phrase about Enoch. That’s all. But among the Apocryphal texts, there are volumes and volumes if you know them. You find the Book of Enoch. Enoch is the first person in antiquity who writes in the first person. ‘I did.’ ‘I heard.’ ‘I was there.’” – Erich von Däniken (Author, Chariots of the Gods?) |
In one of the ancient texts, this great-grandfather of Noah is said to have been taken away by God for 300 years.
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“He was taken up to the sky. Up there, he meets the Highest – the so-called Highest. In religion, they call it God. He meets the Highest and the Highest says to his servants, you teach this young man in our language, and then you teach him writing. So, he writes books of course, he knows all these foreigners by name. He quotes them by name. He knows their profession. He knows which of these extraterrestrials was the astronomer. So, Enoch is the only in first person, thousands of years ago, who gives some of the names of the extraterrestrials and gives some of their professions. How is this possible? We have an eyewitness, and nobody speaks about it. So, I really was confused.” – Erich von Däniken (Author, Chariots of the Gods?) |
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“That would be the argument that the followers of von Däniken would say: why is it so absurd for aliens to come when it’s completely acceptable for God to intervene in human history? The difference is von Däniken’s arguing that aliens came and gave technologies to people to advance those cultures. So, basically, they gave objects. They gave, you know, new ideas and new technologies and that those cultures advanced because of that. Whereas, at least in the Bible, it’s not like God gave humankind a magic watch, you know, or a new missile that they could use to defeat their enemies. God gives instruction – at least the Bible records that God gives instructions on how to live but not how to build new devices that further or advance a specific culture.” – Robert R. Cargill, Ph.D. (Biblical Archaeologist, UCLA) |
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“Can we liken Ezekiel’s chariot to a UFO? The ancients used myth and metaphor and images to describe their experiences with God. I think what we don’t want to fall to is a type of fundamental literalism. The stories of the Old Testament emerge out of the people of that time, out of their own context, to make sense of their experience of God. We can gain insight by reading the Old Testament and reading about Ezekiel’s chariot, but it’s not to draw a strict analogy between his chariot and a UFO.” – Sister Ilia Delio, OSF |
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“When all of these stories were written down, writing was a fairly new invention. The very first thing they wrote down is something that actually happened to them, it was so important, so compelling, so significant to them that they had to put it in writing. Why can’t modern society come to grips that these stories might be true after all?” – Giorgio A. Tsoukalos |
Von Däniken’s research turned up evidence of other arguably extraterrestrial phenomena – and not only in the Bible. Almost every religion has similar stories about deities with spectacular powers and abilities, who come to Earth and directly influence the lives of men.
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“Suddenly, one day I said to myself, ‘Now, come on, this is similar, the stories, in so many old religions. Are they talking about extraterrestrials?’ These so-called gods are here, they give orders, they force the humans to do certain things, and one day they disappear. But they always disappear with the promise to return in a faraway future.” – Erich von Däniken (Author, Chariots of the Gods?) |
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“If, as I believe, people in ancient civilizations were familiar with space travel, people in ancient civilizations were in communication with human-like beings from other planets, then, I think we should expect to find evidence for this in their literature, which we do find.” – Michael Cremo (Author, Forbidden Archaeology) |
Throughout the ancient Sanskrit epics of India, there are numerous descriptions of Vimanas, or mythical flying machines. One of these accounts even dates back over 5,000 years.
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“In the Bhagavad Purana, which is an ancient Sanskrit history, there is a description of a spacecraft that was piloted by a king named Shalva. It’s described that it was made of metal. It was described that it sometimes appeared to be in two places at once. It was described as having a motion similar to that of a butterfly. And these descriptions are consistent with what people who observe UFOs today report.” – Michael Cremo (Author, Forbidden Archaeology) |
In other Sanskrit texts, such as The Mahabharata, the Rig Veda, and the Ramayana, there can be found descriptions of Vimana measuring as much as 100 feet wide, and often equipped with the capabilities of a modern aircraft. One Vimana produced a shaft of light, which when focused on a target, consumed it with its power.
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“It’s like a Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon movies from the ‘30’s. They read like the wildest science fiction. People are flying around in airships called Vimanas, blasting each other and having aerial fights, destroying entire cities.” – David Childress (Author, Technology of the Gods) |
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“And the crazy thing is that all of those stories are totally accepted in the modern society of India.” – Giorgio A. Tsoukalos |
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“I don’t think we could say that these descriptions are simply imagination, because even though they were written thousands of years ago, they match what many people today report in terms of observing the action of UFOs.” – Michael Cremo (Author, Forbidden Archaeology) |
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“Were they just mythological tales that they were making up, fantasy? Or are these physical, real events, and they were trying to describe them as the best that they could? That seems to make more sense to me.” – Jason Martell |
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“I got to tell you this, I would be out of a job in India, because there if I were to talk about Ancient Aliens and ancient gods, they would say, ‘Okay, so what else is new?’” – Giorgio A. Tsoukalos |
Previous: Gods on High | Next: Illustrated History
References:
[1] Prometheus Entertainment. (2010). Ancient Aliens: Season 1. [DVD Back Cover]. Los Angeles, CA: A&E Networks, LLC / History™.
| [2] History™. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.1 – Chariots, Gods, & Beyond. [Episode Description]. Retrieved: April 20, 2010, from http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/season-1.
[2a] Prometheus Entertainment. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.1 – Chariots, Gods, & Beyond. [DVD Footage: Introduction]. Los Angeles, CA: A&E Networks, LLC / History™. [2b] Prometheus Entertainment. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.1 – Chariots, Gods, & Beyond. [DVD Footage: The Catalyst]. Los Angeles, CA: A&E Networks, LLC / History™. [2c] Prometheus Entertainment. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.1 – Chariots, Gods, & Beyond. [DVD Footage: Gods on High]. Los Angeles, CA: A&E Networks, LLC / History™. [2d] Prometheus Entertainment. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.1 – Chariots, Gods, & Beyond. [DVD Footage: Biblical Evidence]. Los Angeles, CA: A&E Networks, LLC / History™. [2e] Prometheus Entertainment. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.1 – Chariots, Gods, & Beyond. [DVD Footage: Illustrated History]. Los Angeles, CA: A&E Networks, LLC / History™. [2f] Prometheus Entertainment. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.1 – Chariots, Gods, & Beyond. [DVD Footage: The Pyramid Puzzle]. Los Angeles, CA: A&E Networks, LLC / History™. [2g] Prometheus Entertainment. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.1 – Chariots, Gods, & Beyond. [DVD Footage: Baffling Monuments]. Los Angeles, CA: A&E Networks, LLC / History™. [2h] Prometheus Entertainment. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.1 – Chariots, Gods, & Beyond. [DVD Footage: Egyptian Electricity]. Los Angeles, CA: A&E Networks, LLC / History™. [2i] Prometheus Entertainment. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.1 – Chariots, Gods, & Beyond. [DVD Footage: Astronomical Alignments]. Los Angeles, CA: A&E Networks, LLC / History™. [2j] Prometheus Entertainment. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.1 – Chariots, Gods, & Beyond. [DVD Footage: Continuing Controversy]. Los Angeles, CA: A&E Networks, LLC / History™. |
[3] History™. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.2 – The Evidence. [Episode Description]. Retrieved: April 20, 2010, from http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/season-1.
[4] History™. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.3 – The Visitors. [Episode Description]. Retrieved: April 27, 2010, from http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/season-1.
[5] History™. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.4 – The Mission. [Episode Description]. Retrieved: May 4, 2010, from http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/season-1.
[6] History™. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.5 – Closer Encounters. [Episode Description]. Retrieved: May 18, 2010, from http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/season-1.
[7] History™. (2010). Ancient Aliens: 1.6 – The Return. [Episode Description]. Retrieved: May 25, 2010, from http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/season-1.
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