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A biblical relic with incredible powers.

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The power to harm.

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The power to kill.

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Even the power to talk to God.

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It aren't going to come in and it's the ultimate high technology device of its day.

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People were terrified of this great and awesome art.

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Wherever it showed up, people would all of a sudden die.

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But is this mysterious gold chest truly of divine origin?

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Or might its powers come from some even more otherworldly source?

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It's the type of super weapon that was being controlled or guided from an extraterrestrial.

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Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past

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by extraterrestrial beings.

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What if it were true?

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Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history?

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And if so, might the proof be found inside the Ark of the Covenant?

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The West Bank

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The West Bank, July 2013

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Ten miles north of the Israeli settlement, a bay down.

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Archaeologists unearth clay pots, stoves, and a portion of a wall dating back to around 1300 BC.

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But the most mundane of their findings here may also be the most significant.

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Holes carved into the solid rock ground.

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Based on the location and the date of the artifacts, they believe these holes

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may have once held the wooden beams used to support the tabernacle at Shiloh.

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If true, it is the first physical evidence ever discovered of the ancient sanctuary built to house

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what is perhaps the most mysterious religious relic in the world.

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The Ark of the Covenant

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The story of the Ark of the Covenant is one of the most fascinating and unexplored stories of the Bible.

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The Ark of the Covenant had some very mysterious powers.

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The Ark of the Covenant was what took me out of mainstream journalism.

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I began to wonder what could this thing have been?

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Reproductions of the Ark of the Covenant can be found in churches, synagogues,

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and Masonic temples throughout the world.

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It has even been featured in popular culture.

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But just what is the Ark of the Covenant?

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Mount Sinai, the 15th century BC

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According to the Bible's Book of Exodus, after the Israelites were released from Egypt,

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God summoned Moses to the peak of this holy mountain

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and gave him two stone tablets carved with the Ten Commandments.

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He also gave him specific instructions for building the Ark of the Covenant.

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It was the box that was constructed to contain the two tablets of the Ten Commandments,

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which were irradiated with divine power because they had been touched by the finger of God.

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The Covenant itself was a contract between God and the Israelites.

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I will be your God and protect you, provided you keep my commandments.

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Israel's end of the deal then was going to be kept in the box, which is the Ark itself.

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But the Ark of the Covenant didn't only carry the Ten Commandments.

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It was also said to be the throne of God himself.

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In the Book of Exodus, in the 25th chapter, the verse is very clear.

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God says to Moses,

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Have them make me a holy place, and I, God, I will dwell among them.

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And wherever the Ark went, that power of God went with them.

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The Ark is built in a reflection of what's called a heavenly Ark.

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It was built two and a half cubits by one and a half cubits by one and a half cubits.

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So the Ark would have been somewhere in the ballpark of about a three by five foot rectangular box.

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It was going to be covered with gold on the outside and the inside,

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and it was to have two gold rings in each of the four corners.

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And it was carried with poles that were run through the rings,

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and the orders were that the poles should never be removed from the rings.

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And the lid was to be made out of gold, and on each end of the lid were to be a cherubim,

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or guardian angels basically with wings.

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But why was it so important that the Ark be constructed to such exact specifications?

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And why would God, a spiritual being, require a physical throne here on Earth?

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Perhaps there is an answer in the Bible's description of Moses after he returned from Mount Sinai.

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After Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he was glowing.

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The Bible says that he had to wear a scarf over his face.

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I am fascinated with the idea that Moses all of a sudden his appearance changed.

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And so the idea that Moses all of a sudden looked different, we have to ask ourselves why.

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Just what did Moses encounter on Mount Sinai?

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Was it God, or was it someone, or something else?

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God is clearly an entity not of this earth.

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And by definition therefore extraterrestrial, where does he come from?

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We must recognize that when the ancients are speaking about God, there is no other term that we can use to describe these experiences other than extraterrestrial.

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After the Ark was built and the Ten Commandments placed within it, the Israelites carried it with them on their 40 year exodus through the desert.

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The Ark of the Covenant was considered powerful because it was the meeting place of God and humanity.

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And so it had to be carried on poles so that it could be conveyed without being touched.

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Certain people were allowed to carry it and those people were ordained priests.

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Aaron, Moses' brother and his sons were certainly priests.

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It was a prestigious job, but you had to know what you were doing.

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Now the Ark would be covered while they're carrying it with a cloth so that they really couldn't see what they were carrying.

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And they were given strict orders that they should not lift up the cloth and look at the Ark and try to see it.

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But why was the Ark considered so dangerous that it couldn't be touched or even looked at?

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According to the Old Testament accounts, the Ark of the Covenant was not only a powerful device on its own, it also housed a number of other important religious relics.

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In addition to the Ten Commandments, it held Aaron's rod, the staff that could miraculously turn into a serpent.

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It also held a jar of manna, an edible starch which reportedly came from the sky.

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What we begin to realize is that the Ark of the Covenant was a sort of tool kit and once this tool kit was assembled, we have the fully functioning Ark of the Covenant.

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The Ark went before them in the wilderness and made sure the place where the children of Israel were to go would be safe and able to provide for them in the desert.

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Anybody's been to the Sinai Desert, you could hardly imagine two to three million people having any kind of substance in a desert.

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So therefore what the Ark must have accomplished was profound.

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The Ark of the Covenant was said to have protected and provided for the Israelites during the Exodus. But how?

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What we can read in the Bible is that they were sustained by something called manna. And the big question is where did this manna come from?

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Well, two engineers by the name of Rodney Dale and George Sassoon in the 1970s proposed that the Ark of the Covenant was nothing else but a container in which to store what they referred to as the manna machine.

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The manna machine was a nuclear-driven device that dispensed food or manna to the Israelites.

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The Ark of the Covenant is such a mystery. It could actually create food, supposedly, the manna that they were eating. It's like some kind of a super-engineering, duplicating energy machine.

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We have a concise description of it in the ancient Jewish text of the Zohar, which is a part of the Kabbalah, where they describe the ancient of days.

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But in reality, the ancient of days is a mistranslation. The correct translation is the transportable one with the tanks.

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Since when is God transportable and why does he need tanks? So in the Zohar, we have concise descriptions, not of God, but some type of a machine.

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Did the Ark of the Covenant really house a machine that provided food to the Israelites during their 40 years in the desert?

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According to ancient astronaut theorists and many religious scholars, the answer is yes. But that wasn't the only power the Ark possessed.

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Whereas the Ark could sustain life, it could also destroy it.

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The Jordan River. A 200-mile border separating the present-day kingdom of Jordan from Israel and the West Bank.

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In 1400 BC, this waterway represented one of the final obstacles to the wandering Israelites' long-awaited entrance into the Promised Land.

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The Ark of the Covenant comes into its own when Joshua was given the task of leading Israel across the Jordan River.

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And the story is that the Ark of the Covenant would go first and be carried into the Jordan River.

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The water would stop flowing.

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Some energy came forth from the Ark, causing the waters to literally stop and ascend, and therefore creating dry land for the entire children of Israel to pass on off into the Holy Land.

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But if this biblical story is true, what kind of power could the Ark of the Covenant have possessed that would cause a raging river to stand still?

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What if the people who wrote these stories were simply reporting on what they were actually seeing?

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If that's true, then the Ark of the Covenant clearly represents a technology that is more advanced than anything we have now.

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If you want to part water, maybe a good way to do it would be with high-speed winds.

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If you blow enough air, you can get the water out of the way, and you can actually maybe even form those two walls of water.

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There's some kind of technology that they're using, and it's so that they can accomplish their goals and continue on their journey, and they're able to use this extraterrestrial technology to do it.

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According to the Bible's Book of Joshua, the Ark of the Covenant once again proved a powerful ally when the Israelites arrived on the western banks of the Jordan River, set on conquering the seemingly impenetrable walled city of Jericho.

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The reputation of the Israelites proceeded down. People were terrified. They ever heard the rumors of the power of this great and awesome Ark.

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They now come to the city of Jericho. The people were commanded by God, march around the city walls.

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They march around the city once on the first day. The next day they do the very same thing. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days the same thing.

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On the seventh day, they march around, and then they blow the trumpets, and all the people shout.

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Between the marching of the feet, the salving of the rams, horns to show far, and with some power not described from the Ark, the neighbor of the big stone mighty walls of the city of Jericho to somehow be vibrated with a earthquake type force which caused them to collapse.

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When I hear that they had to walk around Jericho seven times, and then the trumpets were the ones that allowed for those walls to crumble, one would have to ask yourself, was there something else to it?

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Knocking something down like a wall with pressure is not inconceivable.

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So you could imagine trying to do this. Now when you look at things, think of standard examples that we experienced.

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When the space shuttle lands, we get the sonic boom, and you can feel it rattling the walls and you can actually hear it.

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That's far away. Imagine getting a sonic boom closer to the object. You might be able to do significant damage to the wall.

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Could the Israelites actually have witnessed an advanced technology beyond even our own modern capabilities? A machine that could instantly park waters and bring down stone walls.

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Some ancient astronaut theorists believe the best evidence that the Ark of the Covenant may have held alien technology can be found by studying events that took place 300 years after the sacking of Jericho when the Ark was stolen.

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According to the book of Samuel, when the Israelites went to battle with the mighty Philistine army around 1100 BC, they brought out the Ark of the Covenant to aid them once again.

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But God had not given them instructions to do so.

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Angered by their presumption that they could use the Ark as a weapon without his orders, he awarded victory to the Philistines who captured it as a trophy.

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The Bible records very strange things then started to happen. Death, sickness broke out amongst the Philistines.

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Now in ancient times they had no understanding of energy or what we would maybe consider something similar to a radioactive sickness.

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They considered this to be displeasure of the God.

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They placed the Ark next to a statue of one of their gods, Dagon.

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And they leave and when they come back they see that Dagon's head has been decapitated and his hands have been taken off.

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So they say we've got to get rid of this thing.

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And so they loaded the Ark of the Covenant on a cart and set it off in the direction of an Israeli village called Bethshemish.

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Of course everyone ran up to look at the Ark.

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And as a result the Bible says 70 men died when they looked at the Ark.

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For those who have been fans of Raiders of the Lost Ark and remember the last scene when India's shouting, don't look, don't look, don't look.

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That's where that story comes from.

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The Old Testament contains numerous other examples of the Ark's devastating powers and ultimately depicts it as a deadly device.

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It's capable of striking down anyone who does not follow God's rules.

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When Aaron, who was the High Priest, his two sons approached to give an offering, it stated that literally two beams of fire came forth from the Ark and went up their nostrils and burnt them from the inside, leaving their entire outsides intact.

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Beams of fire, burning people from inside.

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Why would an instrument of God contain such deadly powers?

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If the Ark of the Covenant was truly divine, why would it strike down two people who were simply trying to make an offering?

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Wherever it showed up, people would all of a sudden die.

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In my opinion, it was a storage container that housed some type of a nuclear device.

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And having a nuclear device in the hands of a technologically primitive society would result in people dying left and right.

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Naturally, people would refer to that as the wrath of God, when in reality it's nothing else but the wrath of atomic power.

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Is it possible, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that the Ark of the Covenant actually contained a nuclear device?

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One that was brought to Earth, not by God, but by visitors from another planet?

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It's possible that the Ark of the Covenant is some type of superweapon that was being controlled or guided from an extraterrestrial.

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Was the Ark of the Covenant actually a sophisticated high-tech device that was so advanced that the ancient Israelites were unable to control it? Perhaps.

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But of all the Ark's alleged powers, there was one that was the most incredible.

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Its ability to communicate directly with God.

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At the summit of Jabul Harun, a small white dome marks the tomb of Aaron, the brother of Moses.

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According to the Hebrew Bible, Aaron was chosen by God to be the first high priest of the Israelites, a title that came with enormous responsibility.

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Aaron, Moses' brother, served as priest of the people.

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And then following Aaron, the line of the priests followed his genealogy.

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They were the ones designated to carry the Ark, and they were the ones permitted to come close to it in worship.

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The attire of the priests was beautiful, but it was also there for their protection.

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They had to wear a miter, they wore a breastplate, they had to wear a long robe, they had to keep certain areas of the body protected.

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The head, the lungs, the heart, the genital area.

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The high priest would have to have these on to approach the Ark.

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And when he approached the Ark, he had to have a rope tied around his leg. Why?

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So if and when something ever went wrong, and the Ark struck him or he died.

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No one would be allowed to go in to retrieve his body, because they would suffer the same fate.

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On top of the Ark were the figures of two angels.

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And it was said in the Bible that God's presence came to rest in the tiny space between them.

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That was the place where heaven and earth touched.

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The space between the angels on the lid of the Ark was known as the Mercy Seat.

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Upon which the image of God would allegedly sit when communicating with a Levite priest.

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But did the Israelites really witness an other worldly presence between the two angels?

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And if so, was it literally the image of God or something else?

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Based on the numerous accounts of the Ark's awesome power, some ancient astronaut theorists have proposed

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that it may have been an electrical capacitor.

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A device used for storing and transmitting energy.

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Some of the stories that have come out of history about the Ark of the Covenant,

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that it erupted in sparks and flames and people would touch it and die instantly,

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or that it leveled cities and many people theorized that this is some type of an actual large energy capacitor.

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Capacitor is exactly the right word to use. It relies on static electricity.

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It's a very simple device. You just need two conductors with an insulator between them.

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You've got the outer gold, a very nice conductor, and then if you open this up and look to the inside,

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you'll see a second electrode. So what that's going to look like, okay, you have the outer side of your Ark.

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That's going to say charge positive.

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Then you have your inner wall of the Ark coated in gold, and then you have an insulator in between.

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That's just the wood you make the Ark out of.

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You've got negative charges here on the inner side, and the question is,

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how do I get my positive and negative charges onto my Ark?

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This is where the cherubs come in. You have one sitting on top here that's attached to the outer side,

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and you can put charge on it and get your positive charge.

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The other cherub is going to be sitting here. It won't be connected to the outer layer,

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but it'll come in from a rod and connect to the inner side, and this is where we'll put our negative charge.

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So what that looks like over here at the Ark is this cherub will not actually be attached to the outer conductor.

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There'll be an insulator there, and then it can have a rod that goes through and attaches to the inner conductor.

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Now the Israelites claim to have actually been able to see the presence of God between the two cherubs, a representation of God.

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Now if they weren't actually seeing a representation of God, could this Ark of energy have been some type of other energy device that they were seeing?

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So when we're thinking about the issue of light seeing the image of God between the two cherub wings,

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one of the things to keep in mind I think is how the image of God was often described.

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We have smoke, fire, it's very rarely an actual visual picture of a person.

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And so if you picture what Ark of electricity will be doing, there'll probably be a little bit of smoke,

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there will be the really bright light, there'll be a crackling noise,

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that could certainly be something that would be interpreted as an image of God.

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Is it possible that accounts of God's presence atop the Ark were actually describing electrical discharge?

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And if so, might someone or something have been sending electrical signals through the Ark of the Covenant to communicate with the Israelites?

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Ancient astronaut theorists believe such a notion is not only possible, but all the more plausible.

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Given the biblical descriptions of a device known as the breastplate of judgment.

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According to the book of Exodus, it was worn by the priests when entering the tabernacle

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and was adorned with 12 sacred gemstones called the Stones of Fire,

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which represented the 12 tribes of Israel.

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And according to detailed accounts from sacred texts known as the Talmud,

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these gemstones played an important role when communicating with God through the Ark.

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Somehow there would be a pulsating sound emanating from on top of the cherubim.

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And these pulsating high-pitched sounds would cause vibration in the stones on his breastplate.

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The stones would actually start to light up.

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There seems to be a very complex but very specific code happening here that God is communicating through.

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It was like some extraterrestrial morse code that was being received from the Ark of the Covenant.

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Jerusalem, 995 BC.

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Nearly a century after the Philistines returned the Ark to Judah,

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King David transports it to the capital city with plans to build an enormous temple in order to house it.

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It's Solomon, David's son, who built the Temple of Jerusalem

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and installed the Ark in the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies.

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Once installed in the temple in 955 BC, the mysterious Ark continued to serve the Israelites for another three and a half centuries.

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Until suddenly, it vanishes from history.

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Book of Kings describes the destruction of the city of Jerusalem. It says nothing about the Ark.

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It disappears from the literary history in the same way that it disappeared from material history.

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But what happened to it?

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Was it stolen?

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Destroyed?

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Destroyed?

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Or was it deliberately hidden?

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There are those who believe they know the answer and that not only does the Ark still exist,

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but they are confident it will return.

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Mount Surugi, Japan.

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Every year, Shinto worshippers ascend this mountain, 6,000 miles from the Jewish Holy Land.

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They carry an elaborate, gold-clad chest that, like the Ark of the Covenant, is believed to contain the Spirit of God.

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Scholars in Japan look at the Old Testament.

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They also look at the kind of mythical foundational texts of Japan, like the Kojiki, and see certain similarities.

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And they like to think that these similarities are not just coincidences, but actually suggest ancient connections.

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Part of this theory is that these lost tribes of Israel brought the Ark to Japan,

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and it ended up at a sacred peak, Mount Surugi, and it lays hidden in the limestone caves underneath it.

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Could the Ark of the Covenant really be hidden in Japan?

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And might this explain why Shinto worshippers perform a ritual that's eerily reminiscent of the ancient Israelites carrying the Ark through the desert?

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One Japanese historian named Takani Masanori was so confident that the Ark of the Covenant was hidden in Mount Surugi,

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he actually performed excavations of the mountain in the 1930s.

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Excavations were started in 1936 on the peak or near the peak of Mount Surugi,

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and this research went on for some decades, and then it was all shut down.

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And the area is now in national park, so further research is banned for environmental reasons, so we won't know.

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The Ark of the Covenant has not been found in Japan, but the legend continues.

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Is it possible that a lost tribe of Israel made their way thousands of miles across the Asian continent and brought the Ark to Japan?

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It is just one theory out of many.

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Some biblical scholars suggest that Israel's high priests, anticipating the destruction of the city,

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stashed the Ark deep in a cave under Jerusalem's Temple Mount for protection.

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It is also believed that centuries later, the Ark was discovered in its hiding place and was taken away to safety by a group known as the Knights Templar.

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The Knights Templar were monks who were trained to fight as soldiers in the Holy Land during the Crusade.

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From the 1100s up until the 1300s, they discovered a great treasure, they themselves describe it as a great biblical treasure.

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There are certainly legends throughout Europe and specifically France of where the Ark of the Covenant ended up.

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Some say it was buried beneath a short cathedral in the crypt, some say it was buried in the Languedoc region near Renless Chateau.

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And we know that the Nazis excavated in depth in these mountains looking for the Ark of the Covenant.

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But some believe the Ark's journey didn't end in France and that eventually it was taken even further to the north.

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There's been a rumor for years that the Templar treasure was actually taken through France by the Templars.

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And the story goes that it was then taken to Roslyn Chapel in Scotland for safe keeping.

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Could the Ark of the Covenant still be hidden somewhere in Roslyn Chapel?

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Or might it have been, as some ancient astronaut theorists suggest, taken far away to North America?

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Where it was hidden, deep underground and still lies buried.

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Perhaps, but there are those who believe that the Ark isn't hidden at all.

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They claim its whereabouts have been well known and well guarded for hundreds of years.

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Auxume, Ethiopia, the Church of St. Mary of Zion.

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A solitary monk who was not allowed to leave the grounds is charged with guarding the Church's holy estrellic.

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It is a job he has devoted his life to and one he will keep until his death.

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There's a cathedral there called the Cathedral of St. Mary of Zion.

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And I've started talking to the monk who guarded the chapel and he told me that lying in that chapel was the true, the original Ark of the Covenant.

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Now at first it seemed to me like an incredibly tall story, but as I began to look into it I realized that there was something to the Ethiopian claim.

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For example, why was there an ancient Jewish population in Ethiopia?

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It was like they were frozen in amber from an earlier time and caught in Ethiopia.

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And I got to know a succession of three different guardians of the Ark.

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Once appointed as guardian they have a very short lifespan.

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They die very quickly and one of them in particular was pointed to the issue of his eyes to me and the way that the cataracts were creeping over his eyes.

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And I said, what is causing that? And he said, it's the Ark of the Covenant that's causing that.

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He said, the Ark is a thing of fire.

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And there was such truth and power in his words that I began to feel very strongly about it.

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But the Ethiopians could indeed have this object.

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Could the Ark of the Covenant really reside in a church in Ethiopia?

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In a location so publicly known and so modestly protected?

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If so, why has there been no proof?

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Is it an elaborate hoax?

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Or is there perhaps another reason?

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Could that reason be based on one of the other audacious theories concerning the Ark?

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That there are more than one of them.

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The Torah speaks that there are actually two Arks.

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There was one Ark which was built by Moses when he first came down from Mount Sinai.

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And only later do we find in the book of Exodus was the commandment given for a Ark to be built by Batsala.

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That was the Ark that stayed in the Tabernacle.

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If the Ark really was a technological device, as ancient astronaut theorists believe,

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might there really have been more than one of them?

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And if so, might the various myths and legends about the Ark and its whereabouts all be plausible?

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Perhaps.

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But whether there is one Ark or many, two other important questions remain.

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What was the Ark's true purpose?

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And what would happen if it ever returned?

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The Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem.

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This Islamic shrine sits atop the Temple Mount, once the site of King Solomon's Temple,

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and the last known location of the Ark of the Covenant.

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In 1981, a small team of Israeli workmen secretly tunneled under this hotly disputed site.

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Rabbi Yehuda gets the preeminent rabbi of the West Bank.

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The Western Wall supervised the highly prohibited and politically inflammatory excavation.

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There's a pretty big problem with this because that is the number one sacred site for the Muslims as well.

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And these men believed strongly enough that the Ark of the Covenant had been located there.

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That they were willing to take such great risks to try to locate the Ark of the Covenant themselves.

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When Arabs on the Mount heard noises from the cistern below, they confronted the work crew.

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In what became a dramatic subterranean standoff, police separated the two sides and ordered the tunnel to be resealed.

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To his dying day, Rabbi Getz believed he was just 40 feet away from finding the original Ark of the Covenant.

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But could such an audacious claim be true?

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Might the Ark really still be located where it was thousands of years ago?

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At the site of the Jews' most sacred temple, one of the holiest places on earth.

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For ancient astronaut theorists, the answer may very well be yes.

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And for proof, they point to reports of strange sightings over the Mount in recent years.

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In 2011, there was a very sensational UFO sighting over the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

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Many will call it a fraud, many will say it was not real.

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But it was witnessed that a ball of light came down over the Temple Mount.

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And just hovered there.

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And then all of a sudden, a pulsating light went out from it.

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And then it ascended back up.

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Some speculate that this UFO sighting may have been energizing Ark of the Covenant, which is still there in Jerusalem.

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Could it be a mere coincidence that the UFO sightings occurred over this particular site?

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Or could it be, as some ancient astronaut theorists claim,

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merely the first in a series of events concerning the Ark that are, in fact, the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy?

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There's a very interesting prophecy in the book of Zachariah that states that there's going to be a tremendous earthquake in Jerusalem.

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The Mount of Olives is to split.

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It is said that this earthquake is to be caused by some type of a sonic vibration.

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Created from under the Earth, and that the powers from under the Earth are then going to arise out of this castle with the Ark.

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This was then considered to be, A, the return of the Ark, and B, the famous, of course, coming of the Messiah.

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All three of the big three religions have prophecies about the end-time arrival of a messianic figure.

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And what we're told is that angels will help bring the Ark of the Covenant back to Earth.

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Could the light seen over the Temple Mount indicate that some sort of extraterrestrial reactivation of the Ark was taking place?

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And if so, might we be close to finally rediscovering this ancient relic and finding the source of its incredible power?

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If that device were ever to be found, then that will forever change the course of human history.

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Because if we look at our past, it already has changed the course of human history.

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If the Ark could be found, and if it could be retrieved, the possibility exists that its technology could be understood and exploited,

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and possibly even used to reconnect with whoever created it.

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If they were in fact extraterrestrial beings, then the reality is we might have a direct phone line to the ETs.

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We as a culture, as a species, we seem to use most of our technology for war.

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And so it would be like giving a three-year-old a loaded gun.

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We can barely deal with the technology that we have now, so maybe it's good that for now it's hidden.

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Could the Ark of the Covenant, perhaps the most coveted of the world's lost relics, really be the ultimate proof of an ancient extraterrestrial encounter?

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If so, what was it? A sophisticated weapon? A communication device? A nuclear power source?

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Or was it something else entirely? Something beyond our comprehension?

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And if it is found, will it lead to mankind's destruction? Or to a reunion with our alien ancestors?

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One thing is certain. The search for the Ark will continue, and there are those who believe it will be found.

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Much sooner than we think.