Herbert W Armstrong

   Man alone of all creatures, harbors an insatiable interest in the past. The Luna of pyramids and statues has captured lives and fortunes. We remain as convinced as ever that knowledge of the dead will help provide knowledge and help for the living. Yet, despite man's efforts, antiquities still guard many mysteries. The ancient civilizations are gone, and they've left their monuments behind, but they've taken their secrets with them.

   What are the lessons to be learned from those weathered ruins? Can it be true, as some say, that these ancient wonders were not built by man alone but with the help of ancient astronauts? I bet you didn't know that spacemen helped build the Great Pyramid or that visitors from outer space have been found in the monuments, the rocks, and some of the vast reliefs and carvings from Easter Island to the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, Central and South America, in Africa. And for that matter, all around the world. I didn't know that either. But sensational new books have been very widespread, capturing so much interest. They've become almost overnight best sellers, which imply that many of the civilizations of the past and the myth, of course, of Atlantis is always with us, has been interfered with, if not directed by, or maybe they have their chief engineers and architects and some of their scholars and musicians of the like coming from outer space. Some of the ancient structures that now lie in ruins are supposed to have been designed by visitors from outer space, mythology supposedly talks of bygone astronauts, and new sensational books, one in particular that came from Germany and was an overnight best seller in the United States has said that even visitors from outer space helped design the Great Pyramid. And they say that there is one picture down in the Yucatan Peninsula of a man sitting in a rocket that is actually there on some of the ancient Mayan or Aztec or Inca monuments, whatever they may be. Even the Bible, the story goes refers to spaceships.

   So, the Great Pyramid, of course, speculation about its origins, who built it, where it came from, what it symbolizes, this is not new. They even designed what they called the pyramid inch, an arbitrary system of measurement that has nothing to do with any other system of measurement that was supposed to bring people to various prophecies about the future. But there was another idea about the pyramid. We'll come to you a little bit later about the relationship between the earth and the sun, even as a certain measurement. The latest, I think it's the latest idea in a long series of strange religious and scientific notions associated with a mammoth tomb called the pyramid built 4000 years ago is that visitors from outer space helped put it together.

   The view we get of the Great Pyramid today is, of course, nothing like that seen by the ancients. The rough limestone blocks now exposed were originally covered by polished white limestone, long since carted away and used to build a lot of the buildings in Cairo. Ancient historians record that the pyramids, its white outer coat dazzling the viewer, resembled a snow-covered mountain that was visible for many miles. The approximately 2,300,000 stones in the Great Pyramid averaged two and one-half tons apiece, and then questioned how mere human laborers with primitive tools could have fashioned and moved giant blocks sometimes working from underground quarries.

   Amazing statistics are quoted about the tomb, such as that its height multiplied by 1000 million equals the distance to the sun and that its base area divided by twice its height equals pi 3.14. Those who feel that there was extraterrestrial help involved say that since modern engineers could not duplicate the pyramid, surely the Egyptians couldn't have built it alone.

   2300 miles west of South America, there lies Easter Island, a 46-mile square speck in the Pacific that has been a puzzle ever since Europeans first laid eyes on it. When Dutch explorers arrived on Easter Sunday in 1722, thus naming the island. They found over 1000 huge statues scattered around the perimeter of the island.

   Today, scholars still can't agree on where the Islanders came from or why and why they built so many of these; they're called Moai as the statues are named. But they do agree that it's indeed strange to find such an advanced culture. That's what that is. All those upright obelisk-like faces. If that symbolizes advanced culture, it certainly symbolizes an awful lot of work.

   They wonder what it is doing so far away from the cradle of civilization. Pitcairn, the nearest inhabited island is over 1400 miles away of the Polynesian island. Only Eastern island possessed a native written script which still remains undecided. The Islanders knew something of astronomy and were able to determine the solstices and equinoxes. The most puzzling of all were the statues. Some weigh only about eight tons; others weigh over 50 tons. Originally, the Moai wore stone hats also weighing several tons with neither, at least they reasoned metal tools nor the wheel. How could the Islanders of themselves have carved and erected these giant statues?

   Most Americans know little about the ruins that lie in the jungles of Central America. But here in Guatemala and Yucatan are colossal edifices reminiscent of Egypt. There were pyramid builders there; speculators about ancient spacemen say that since the Mexican pyramids are aligned according to the stars, perhaps the Indians were given a calendar by the gods, meaning spacemen that they thought visited the earth and required to build temples and monuments in accordance with the calendar before the gods so-called gods return.

   Further confirmation, they say that space voyagers beat Columbus to the new world is provided by such articles as a stone relief from Yucatan that supposedly shows an astronaut complete with his space gear, headgear, and instrument sitting in the controls of a rocket. That's what they say is; later, we'll tell you what it really is.

   Other mysteries from Central and South America include a network of road-like structures in Peru. Recent speculation says there may have been a landing field for flying saucers there, thus exploiting the myth that flying saucers can defy all laws of aerodynamics and gravity and can land practically anywhere, even on a dime.

   Although the Mayas, the Aztecs, the Incas, the Toltecs are gone, they've left behind legends which supposedly tell in their primitive way of visits from outer space. One such legend is that about Quetzalcoatl. Now, actually, one of monoliths, it's either Honduras, I forget that has the Quetzal for its monetary standard and also on its stamps and its national stationary and the Coatl beautiful plumed bird of Central American jungles named after a winged flying serpent. Because that's what Quetzalcoatl meant in the Indian language. The word Quetzal, the snake and Coatl is a bird. So, bird snake or winged snake.

   Now, there's an interesting correlation between some of these pagan myths about visitors from outer space or those that have the powers of a God and what the Bible says, believe it or not. Now, this Quetzalcoatl is said to have come from an unknown country, wearing a white beard and a robe. He taught the people sciences, art, crafts, literature, customs. Eventually, he left traveling with the morning star. That's interesting with a promise to return.

   Those who think the earth was visited by space travelers in ancient times point out that religion and mythology are full of such stories. Even the Bible is said to passages about spaceships referring to the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel, which appears to be a platform with wheels with blazing lights all around with strange creatures having four faces, each appearing like a man, an ox, a lion, and an eagle and conveying the one who speaks from above the throne.

   It appears to be God, and some have thought, missing the entire point of that prophecy of the first chapter of Ezekiel that this is a spaceship that it's kind of like a flying saucer. And when they see the description of wheels within a wheel, they are reminded of a gyro or a gyroscopic instrument of some sort. And so, speculation is rife, of course, especially among those that delve in mysticism, astronomy, and the pseudo-science of astrology about the meaning of the first chapter in the book of Ezekiel about strange visitors from outer space.

   If they would just read the chapter and read what Ezekiel said about it, they would find out Ezekiel is talking about an encounter with the one who calls himself the creator of all mankind and not visitors from outer space.

   The search for new religions isn't new. Centuries ago, traditional religion was losing its influence in the Roman Empire. The concepts of the Old Roman religion no longer satisfied the Romans of that era. The Ambassador College publication, "The Modern Romans," compares our Western civilization with ancient Rome. The search for meaningful religion is only one aspect of the striking parallel. You'll also read about the home, but it's part of the fabric of society. The use of economics, politics, and militarism. Nine informative chapters cover everything from the lessons of history ignored to the unseen hand in history. "The Modern Romans" would hope you see our troubled times in proper historical context. Are we making the same mistakes that toppled the mighty Roman Empire? Is history repeating itself? Be sure to read "The Modern Romans."

   Traditionally, when you talk of ancient city-states, ancient civilizations, ancient lost civilizations, and all the books speculate about our lost valley somewhere where living dinosaurs still roam or about the lost continent of Atlantis. We always talk about pagan grandeur, pagan splendor. We like to muse and convince ourselves that those ancient civilizations were far better than ours. That there weren't the pains and aches and worries of our civilization. They didn't have the pollution, the overpopulation, they were far more advanced, they were more intelligent, they were freer in their entire culture and their ways of thinking especially we like to associate with ancient pagan states and civilizations, rampant wild orgiastic sex indulgence.

   And so, there are literally hundreds of books about ancient civilizations and the way we imagine they might have been. There is no end to books some of them, very superficially done, virtually ignoring true sciences such as archaeology, history, and even the Bible itself, even if you look at it from a purely profane or a historical point of view, which appeared to draw all sorts of conclusions from pagan monuments and ancient artifacts and then completely misinterpret those things, weave together a fantastic story of what might have been, and bedazzle a reader with pagan splendor and grandeur of long ago.

   Probably some of the first viewers in the modern era in the 1800s of the pyramid. And even before that time when the tomb robbing of the pharaoh's tombs was going on apace. And finally when all the fabulous gold of Tutankhamun tomb were found, people speculated about the meaning of those great vast buildings and monuments. They couldn't be just a tomb with an elaborate interior or elaborate mechanism that would cause a complete ceiling little by little to keep the successive governments out. They had to have some otherworldly outer space or spiritual significance.

   One thing they thought when they looked at the Great Pyramid is man couldn't have done that by himself. Tremendous rock quarries have been located far up the Nile from whence the giant stones were taken to build the pyramid and many of those quarries were underground since they didn't think that the Egyptians had all sorts of saws and tools easily capable of cutting out limestone. They wondered how they did that. Once quarried though, the stones were moved on sledges and floated down the Nile on barges and there remained pictures drawn in stone of how that was done. From there, it would have taken about 20 men just with manpower, back power, and pulling and tugging to maneuver an average stone weighing two and one-half tons into place.

   The movies such as "The Ten Commandments" and other such movies, "The Exodus," and the like showed pictures of building a sort of a giant mound of earth of which the pyramid was at the end of it all. And it gradually, this whole mound that approached it got bigger and bigger and that they dragged these things up there, was just the power of hundreds of slaves, not beginning to speculate for one moment that they would have invented anything like pulleys at that day, that they would have known about the ratio between gears and wheels and weights.

   And so, they decided it had to be a completely Stone Age society, but it was all done by the muscle power of man and mule. A barracks that probably housed some 4,000 permanent workers and supervisors has also been found. But the bulk of the workforce obviously was slave labor, what about 100 or 1,000 rather, million times the height of the pyramid equaling the distance of the sun and its base divided by twice its height equaling pi. These amazing facts are actually not facts at all but long since discarded notions concocted by enthusiasts in the last century. Such enthusiasts, they are called by modern science, pyramid idiots.

   The Indians in Central and South America used basically the same construction techniques as the Egyptians. But those pyramids were nowhere near so ancient. They're nowhere near so exact. They are misshapen in comparison with the great pyramids of Egypt, and most of their centers are either a former pyramid that was like round if you've ever been to the museums of that part of the world, which I have been, actually some of the rectangular type. That isn't the correct word to use. Pyramids had been built over a circular type of a pyramid, which was nothing more than an altar with a roadway going around it, giving access to an altar on top where human sacrifices were once to be given.

   Pyramid builders reigned all over Central and South America, the Yucatan Peninsula and the Mexico City, and many thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Americans have been to the pyramids of San Juan de Tehuacan, which is very near Mexico City. About a 40 or 50-minute drive outside where you see the pyramid of the sun and the pyramid of the moon. Those are earthen filled, there apparently aren't no caverns and excavations attended to prove that that is true inside. They're not used as tombs.

   The Mayan stone relief that supposedly shows an astronaut at the controls of the spaceship has been explained by archaeologists as being a Mayan dignitary on a throne with all the feathers and the things decorating in there. And as for the so-called ancient airport for flying saucers to be accommodated in Peru, archaeologists feel that the extensive markings there had something to do with astronomy or maybe astrology. But it seems strange that any space travelers would set out on a journey through the universe in a spaceship that required a runway to land, miscalculation, maybe, especially one that is miles long as the one in South America appears to be.

   Quetzalcoatl was the god, as they say, who sailed away to the morning star and promised to return. Gordon Whittaker of Grande University tells us that Quetzalcoatl was actually a Soltech god associated with Venus, a god of fertility and the deity of agriculture and fertility. But there was at least one ruler who took the name of that god and conquered large portions of the Mexican subcontinent only to be later expelled. It was apparently he, not a space voyager, who vowed to return. Quetzalcoatl, as I said, was a winged flying serpent. And you see all of the temple in South America, pictures of him.

   The mysteries of Easter Island are also gradually being unwoven. All the statues were apparently carved from one volcanic mountain. In fact, hundreds of partially carved Moai remained, perhaps left because they became flawed during construction. In his book, "Aku-Aku," Thor Heyerdahl describes how he induced a few natives to show him just how the statues were carved using stone tools. Island traditions and what archaeologists have actually seen done by modern Islanders demonstrate that native muscle power could have moved these statues. Dr. William Malloy, who accompanied Heyerdahl has been back many times, feels that perhaps a log sledge was lashed under the Moai to help in the moving. The statues were raised by gradually prying them upward and placing stones underneath the same. Dr. Malloy feels that the production of statues eventually became an obsession, diverting the Islanders' efforts to more important pursuits and contributing to the decline of the civilization.

   The first chapter of the book of Ezekiel does not talk about just visitors from outer space, but it does talk about beings from other worlds if you want to put it that way. And the book of Ezekiel is not the only book of the Bible, it talks about such things. So does Isaiah. So does even the book of Exodus where Moses is seen in conversation with the one who revealed himself as God who said I am and gave Moses the details for the building of the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the Mercy Seat, the Ark of the Covenant in which the laws were placed and the two gold Cherubim facing each other over that so-called Mercy Seat that has spiritual symbolism as well as just a physical beauty and was carried from place to place as a symbol of their religion.

   The Bible records many interventions from outer space, all right, but not by space men, by the creator God. If everyone is familiar with the statement, truth is stranger than fiction. And it really is, when you look into the Bible, you will see not only the origins of original truth, which gradually as people moved away from the centers of knowledge and culture became mythologized, watered down and perverted and became what we now call tradition and myth. But you will see a great deal more than that, an overall plan and purpose for the very creation of humankind on this planet out here in the blackness of space in our corner of the Milky Way and the eventual outcome of the entire story.

   Believe it or not, the Garden of Eden gives rise to the story of the giants, the ogres at the end of the far-off hill dwelling in a castle where in all the goodies like the golden eggs laid by the golden goose, all the treasures and the jewelry are kept or all knowledge that is supposed to be there. The biblical account of the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve being driven from that garden also includes something very few people know about. It states in the Bible that God had Cherubim and most people don't know what those were, placed at the way, keeping the way to the tree of life and keeping everybody out of that garden.

   Another thing, very few people seem to know is that if you take the Bible, literally, you're talking about it as a history book for the moment and not just a religious book to argue over that from the time of Adam to the time of the flood of Noah. And again, I'm talking about a Bible, which is understood literally. Now, not one to argue about that really comprises 1/6 of all the time of history from that time to today. And that from the time of Adam Methuselah coming along very shortly, Adam's life and Methuselah overlapped, but there was 1/6 of all of history during that time these Cherubim were guarding the way to the entrance of the garden of Eden. People were expelled in that area and went over into the area that we call the so-called cradle of civilization where cities gradually developed as mankind began to explode on the earth, at that time.

   Classroom projects of taking an average family with a man aged 25 and a woman aged 21 or so and limiting them to even maybe four children, which I think is not the case as the Bible itself tends to reveal, could tend to indicate that in the course of time. Looking at what the Bible itself says about the rapidity with which people did move around and established cities and how population could grow beginning from just two parents and the numbers of children they had.

   And then the whole thing like the old story, which would rather have a million dollars or a dime, a penny rather doubled every day for 30 days, pick the penny and do a little math at home if you don't believe me on that, we have done classroom projects to show that the earth could have been people by up into the billions of human beings prior to the flood. A little-known idea. Maybe you can't say it was a fact, but it is a possibility.

   What did Cherubim look like? The first chapter in the book of Ezekiel helps you as do other portions of the Bible that tend to indicate they look like at one time or another, a very powerful man, a lion, an eagle, and an ox guarding the gates to ancient palaces. Even back in Nippur, Sargon and Babylon were the mass release of Cherubim. And they appeared to be giant bull-like creatures with the wings of an eagle, the head of a man, the claws, the tail, the legs of a lion, but yet with the body of an ox and some of them were the hoofs of an ox. Thus comprising all of these constituents of those ancient pagan ideas.

   A Carib can look apparently like a flying creature in one place in the Bible. In other places, Seraphim are used interchangeably as being over the Mercy Seat of the ark and having wings stretched forward, and they are called again, Seraphs, and Caribs in the Bible are creatures that literally do exist that are spirit beings. This is what the Bible says.

   But look at it this way, if it were true that the 1/6 of all the human history until the time of the flood, there were these giant creatures standing there and it said with a sword of flames turning this way and that to guard the way of the tree of life. What would have been the story that would have been told that perpetuated over this time, this side of the flood by the survivors of that catastrophe?

   Well, I'd say that you could have a fair idea that on down in history, eventually, you would find a story of their once having been a fantastic civilization, a very advanced civilization with millions and maybe billions of people that sunk beneath the waves. Do you know that tribes all over the Earth? From the islands of the South Pacific to the Yucatan Peninsula, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and here in America had global flood traditions. They had tradition that talked about men escaping on a log or being conveyed through the waters in a shell. Thus a tradition of life springing forth from an egg.

   They had ideas about boats in Central and South America. The idea that all of mankind drowned one time and that the gods preserved their lives in a ship with white sails and someday that ship would return. It was also a tradition among some of those natives. Would you believe that tribal societies, ancient pagan ones have universally a flood tradition, a giant destruction by flood? What else would you expect mythology to come up with? But the idea of there being a castle, a place where all religion and all knowledge and all gold and money and jewels and maybe even eternal life was guarded by what, by a dragon?

   And what in the world is a dragon? Well, it looks like a snake-like creature. You've seen pictures of St. George and the dragon with wings a head of a snake with a fork tongue or maybe fire coming out and wings. And what in the world is the Indian word Quetzalcoatl, a ringed flying serpent. And what was a Seraphim? It is called a winged flying creature. The Hebrew word Saraph, S-a-r-a-p-h means fiery serpent and believe it or not, the Bible shows the devil is likened in the New Testament to a dragon and in the Old Testament to a serpent.

   Kind of strange, isn't it that even when God in his word enjoins upon people not to worship what he calls the host of heaven, meaning creatures which do exist. And the Bible reveals that Satan the devil, formerly an Archangel called Lucifer rebelled against God's government was chained to this earth in rebellion and is called a serpent and a dragon. Yet, among all of these pagan societies of the past, you have almost universal myth about a winged flying serpent, a dragon-like creature who is guarding the way to all the goodies.

   And so down in the child, beddy-bye stories today about Jack and the Beanstalk or Jack and the giant killer or St. George and the dragon are perpetuated what we call myth. But it's strange when you look into what we call myth and find that in so many cases, what is today only looked upon as mythology had original truthful origins. Yes, including the story of Atlantis because there once was a global disruption which did destroy an entire society and quite an advanced one. But one which had begun to degenerate much like ours has done.

   It's amazing to me that man tends to look back in a wistful nostalgic desire to prove that life was better way back when. Oh, no, it wasn't any better if anything, it could have been far worse. And yet we live now in a time of the potential for human termination because of our modern age has bequeathed to us in terms of scientific means of destruction of all of humankind. The very impact of our modern technology now threatens the possible cosmic side of all of humanity.

   So, we've come to full circle from those ancient city-states and empires. All we can see today are ruins, statues of pagan gods that weren't able to help or to save. Ruins and broken shards of pottery, bits and fragments of literature or of music, of implements and instruments, roadways, homes, buildings, all just the shattered remnants of ancient city-states and empires. We like to think they were pagan and they were splendiferous and they were grand, but they weren't. They have built in them the very death knell and the flaw that is built into ours. That of greed, lust, vanity, jealousy, human ego, and they needed the same solution. They just failed and went down into nothing. Are we going to go the same way or is there some solution? Not just visitors from outer space, but an intervention from the divine, all-wise powerful God. The Bible says, that's going to happen. And it is the only solution.

   This new booklet, Is This The End Time? goes right down the line on this subject as I have been doing and shows you from the Bible as well as some current conditions that are extant on the earth that are living in the time of the end. But it's approached from a different point of view than you might think a completely objective point of view, asking the Bible to prove it to us one way or the other.

   The Bible characterizes the end time as being a time when certain great global trends, certain discernible conditions would be extant. Are these conditions just exactly as the Bible lays them out conditions that concern you and me right now today. Are they right now on the earth? Are they a living part of your day-to-day news?

   What about Daniel's statement that knowledge would be increased and many would run to and fro what about the statement that the prophecies of the book of Daniel would be concealed cloaked and would be hidden from human understanding until the time of the end. These and other proofs are going to be found in this booklet. Is This The End Time? This is Ted Armstrong saying goodbye, friends.

   You have been listening to the world tomorrow. If you would like more information, write to Ambassador College Box 345 GP Sydney, New South Wales. That's Ambassador College box 345 GP Sydney, New South Wales.