Ark of the Covenant Revealed!

Kelly Hollowell, the delightfully daffy columnist for the Worldnutdaily, has a new column up about the imminent discovery of the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant was the golden box that allegedly housed the Ten Commandments tablets and the rod of Aaron, and it has been the center of much bizarre speculation. I've actually had more than one amusing wingnut tell me that the Ark was really a "fusion communicator/weapon" given to the ancient Israelites by aliens. Rod Serling, call your office. But now, according to Hollowell, we're about to find it:

One famous adherent to this theory is Dr. Vendyl Jones. He is a modern-day explorer and teacher and the true inspiration for the Indiana Jones series. Startling the world, he announced last week on Israel National Radio that he actually knows the location of the Ark.

He says according to ancient documents the Ark is hidden in a secret passage that runs 18 miles south of the Temple Mount into the Judean Desert. Before dismissing his claim as a lark, it is worth noting that Jones published a book in 1959 predicting the precise outbreak of the Six Day War...

Now Jones is convinced that with the help of ancient documents found in Qumran, he has pinpointed the location of the Ark. And armed with the blessing of religious leaders, Jones hopes to reveal the location of the Ark by Aug. 14, which marks the Fast of Tisha B'Av. This holy day commemorates repeated tragedy in Jewish history including the destruction of both the First and the Second Holy Temples.

Jones' plan is simple. It is to drill a borehole into the chamber containing the Ark, drop a pin-camera in and reveal the historic treasure to a watching world.

And surely the world will be watching, with all the anticipation with which it watched Geraldo breathlessly open Al Capone's vault. But me? I won't be watching. Because I know something Hollowell doesn't know - the Ark has already been found. It was found by Ron Wyatt in Jerusalem when he found out that his own left hand had apparently been doing research behind his back:

One day, in 1978, Ron decided to go sightseeing near the Damascus Gate, in Jerusalem. Walking along an ancient stone quarry, known to some as "the Calvary Escarpment," he was talking with a local authority about Roman antiquities. Without warning, Ron's left hand pointed to a site being used as a rubbish dump and said, "That's Jeremiah's Grotto and the Ark of the Covenant is in there."

And this amazing story gets more and more amazing as it goes along. Ron and his sons dug along the ancient seige wall that attempted to keep out the Babylonians in the 6th century BC, an area known as Golgotha, and discovered the tomb that Christ was buried in, as well as the actual holes where the cross of Christ stood! But wait...there's more. After a visit from a South African angel (no, I'm not making that up) telling Ron to buck up, little camper, the discoveries came fast and furious. Digging beneath the site of the crucifixion, Wyatt found a series of secret caves and in one of them, he found the Ark of the Covenant itself.

Continuing to shift aside more rocks and wood, he then found a stone casing. The lid had cracked and had been moved aside. Ron shone his flashlight down through the crack and saw a chest of beaten gold. He knew he was looking at the Ark of the Covenant. Overwhelmed with emotion and suffering from pneumonia Ron passed out for 45 minutes in that chamber. It was January 6th 1982, when Ron made this amazing discovery.

But wait, the story gets even better. Not only did he discover the site of the crucifixion, complete with the actual holes into which the cross was placed; not only did he discover the burial tomb of Christ and the stone that was rolled over the opening of that tomb; not only did he discover the Ark of the Covenant and the sword of Goliath (it was in the same cave, he says); no, he also discovered the very blood of Christ!

Whilst in the chamber, Ron noticed a dried, black substance in an earthquake crack in the roof, above the Ark of the Covenant. He noticed that this black substance was also on the lid of the cracked stone casing. Obviously, this substance had dripped from the crack in the roof, and provision had been made for it to land on the Ark of the Covenant, as the stone lid had been cracked and moved aside. Ron wondered what substance could be so sacred, that God made provision for it to land on the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant. He remembered the earthquake crack at the foot of the cross hole, and suddenly an awesome realization as to what had happened, came over him. Ron traced the earthquake crack, and indeed it was the same crack as the one at the cross hole. The dried black substance in the crack was tested and proved to be blood, apparently the blood of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that when Jesus died there was an earthquake and the rocks were rent (Matt. 27:51). A Roman soldier speared Christ in His side in order to make sure He was dead, and blood and water poured out (John 19:34). Ron discovered that this same blood and water poured down through the earthquake crack and fell upon the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant.

Now, I don't expect you to believe this fantastic story on its own. You should know that Ron Wyatt was trained as a scientist. Okay, as a nurse anesthetist, and medicine is kinda like science, right? Nonetheless, Wyatt is very careful to document everything and to thoroughly test every artifact to make sure his conclusions are rock solid. So he rehydrated this dried blood and had it tested and those tests proved that it could only have come from Jesus himself:

Human cells normally have 46 chromosomes. These are actually 23 pairs of homologous chromosomes. In each pair of chromosomes, one of the pair is from the mother and the other member is from the father. Therefore, 23 chromosomes come from the mother and 23 from the father. In each set of 23, 22 chromosomes are autosomal and one is sex-determining. The sex-determining ones are the X chromosome and the Y chromosome. Females are XX, so they can only contribute an X chromosome to their offspring, whereas males are XY, which allows them to contribute either an X or a Y. If they contribute an X, the child is female, whereas if they contribute a Y, the child is male. The fascinating finding in this blood was that instead of 46 chromosomes, there were only 24. There were 22 autosomal chromosomes, one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. This evidences that the person to whom this blood belonged to had a mother but no human father, because the normal contribution of paternal chromosomes is missing.

Now, I know this story strains credulity a bit. I know it's hard to swallow all at once. But remember, this is the same Ron Wyatt who also found Noah's Ark (I know, I know, his fellow ark searchers continue to search for it, but they're wasting their time, he already found it), Sodom and Gomorrah, the real Mt. Sinai, and the exact spot where the Red Sea was parted. And he once found my sunglasses when I lost them in his "Museum of God's Wonders", while examining the "petrified wood" he brought back from Noah's Ark (it was rather unusual for petrified wood because it didn't have any tree rings in it, but Ron's faithful assistant Jim explained to me that this was because trees didn't have rings before the flood). And he's got evidence! He has pictures! Well, sort of:

He tried to photograph it with a Polaroid, but the photos turned out foggy. He returned with a colonascope, but again the photos turned out foggy.

I presume he means a "colonoscope", the device used to insert a camera up one's rectum to examine the colon - a particularly appropriate tool for this particular job given that this orifice appears to be the one out of which this entire story has been pulled. But he does have pictures. Why, here's a picture of Ron himself peering through the hole he dug into the cave:

How clear could it be? So one might think that Dr. Jones is wasting his time, since it's already been discovered. But then again, it occurs to me that perhaps this is the fulfillment of Ron's prophecy:

Ron has been told (although he stresses he does not hear voices, and is not a prophet) that the time is not yet for the world to see this discovery with their own eyes.

The time is coming when the inhabitants of the world will have a universal, religious law enforced upon them. This law will force man to break God's law, by penalty of disenfranchisement (being unable to buy or sell, Rev. 13:17). Some time after this law has been passed, God will allow the tables of stone (The 10 Commandments) and a good clear video of the Ark of the Covenant to be put on public display.

Okay, count me in. I'll be watching with breathless anticipation and a tub of popcorn.

Update: I didn't see this post by Bartholemew before writing this. As usual, he is far more thorough than I in examining this kind of issue. He amusingly calls Vendyl Jones the "Kent Hovind of archaeology". Ironically, Kent Hovind was friends with Ron Wyatt as well.