Comments: Complements & Insights

Keywords: UFO, unidentified flying objects, Bible, flying saucers, prophecy, Paleo-SETI, ancient astronauts, Erich von Däniken, Josef F. Blumrich, Zecharia Sitchin, Ezekiel, biblical prophecy, spacecraft, spaceship, NASA, Roswell, aircraft, propellant, extraterrestrial hypothesis, Jacques Vallee, interdimensional hypothesis, Project Blue Book, Condon Report, ancient history, Jesus, Judaism, Christianity, Middle East, end times, engines, rockets, helicopters, space travel, aliens, abductions, alien abductions, crop circles, extraterrestrials, astronomy, economics, biology, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Space Shuttle, Apollo, stars, planets, solar system, scriptures, design, fuel tank, aerodynamics, fuels, hydrogen, oxygen, wheels

Comments on Chapter 6

Go to Chapter Part: A B C D

Blumrich's confusion regarding the Temple derives in part from his refusal to consider Ezekiel's entire text and his stubborn insistence on rejecting Ezekiel's repeated statements that Ezekiel was seeing visions.

Ezekiel says expressly that he was Ezekiel 8:3 NKJV "brought . . . in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the north gate of the inner court". In verse 6, which Blumrich ignores, this "God" who is speaking refers to the Temple as "My sanctuary". There was only one "sanctuary" of "God" in "Jerusalem".

Ezekiel 8:16—which Blumrich also omits—leaves no doubt that Ezekiel was seeing the existing Temple and that he was seeing it in a vision, not physically looking at it:

Ezekiel 8:16 NKJV So He brought me into the inner court of the LORD's house; and there, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun toward the east.

Blumrich could easily be excused for misunderstanding the portions about the Temple except for the fact that in Chapter 7 (Part E) he quotes a rabbi who says that at times Ezekiel is describing a future Temple. Biblical scholars are in general agreement that the Temple described is the Third Temple in Jerusalem—which has not been built yet. Solomon's Temple was built around 950 B.C. and destroyed by the Babylonians around 587 B.C. Around 541 B.C. the Second Temple was built, as described in the book of Ezra. The Second Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D.

Of course, this creates additional problems with Blumrich's "shuttlecraft" theory: 

1. To physically bring Ezekiel from 570 B.C. to sometime beyond the first decade of the twenty-first century A.D. and back, the craft would have to be capable of bidirectional time travel.
2. It is ridiculous to think that a craft capable of time travel would use helicopter blades!

Blumrich points out that there are problems if the Temple is allegedly in the Jerusalem area because there were few or no places that fit the geographical description. Not being a biblical scholar, he was unaware that according to various Old Testament prophets, when the Messiah comes there will be a great earthquake in the area that will change various geographical features, e.g. Zechariah 14.

How do we know Ezekiel didn't visit some other temple? 

Israel is a relatively small country, only about 200 miles (320 km) long. Modern Israel is about the size of the State of New Jersey in the United States. Particularly in modern times, Israel has been thoroughly explored. If there were any remains of such a massive temple they would have been found.
 
Building such a large temple would have required huge amounts of stone, etc., large groups of workers, and a large support system for the workers, i.e., deliveries of food, building materials, etc., over an extended period of time. This would mean well-traveled roads. Heavy traffic over a relatively narrow area for an extended period of time changes the physical characteristics of the ground. For instance, the dirt becomes more compacted, making it denser. Even though that often cannot be seen from the ground, thermographic imaging equipment can spot it from the Space Shuttle and satellites. A number of ancient Middle Eastern roads and ruins of cities have been discovered using that technique.
 
Once it was built, any temple as large as the one Ezekiel visited would have required a large operational staff. Operational staff couldn't just hop on a bus and ride 10 miles (16 km) each way to and from work. They had to live in the immediate area—within 2-3 miles (3-5km). Of course, support staff would need marketplaces where they could buy food, etc. Large families were the norm, so there would need to be enough food supplies, family garden plots, grazing land for family animals, etc., to support the families of the support staff. Any population center that large would have been well-known to the people of the time.