Deceptions in the name of Christ

I have for years been skeptical of the professed claims of the amateur archaeologist Ron Wyatt. To me he seems to have claimed to have found the most significant things the Christian church has always wanted to find. He found Noah's Ark, he found the place where Moses parted the sea and some of the remains of Pharaoh's army. He found the Ark of the Covenant. All of those things would be very impressive and if found should have some kind of evidence to establish their discovery. But he seemed to provide no evidence.

Then I was doing some web wandering since my local church has an amazing discovery/prophecy seminar going on. I wanted to see what people were saying about the presenter of the programs, since the Advertising Leaflet that the church sent out to local residents says nothing about the Seventh-day Adventist church and the presentation was offered at a local high school theater rather then the church. After all this is the Internet age, if you are interested in something it takes very little effort to find out about it by searching the Internet, I see no reason to keep trying to hide the identity of the Adventist church in these things, if they are going to present their version of the truth then be up front about it. I searched the name of the evangelist, of course I found out he was an Adventist hired by the Washington conference and I even found out about his previous presentation last year from some discussion on the website rational skepticism. You can read it for yourself overall the guy sounds pretty accurate in his evaluation of the program. But it brought me to some links to Ron Wyatt.

What I did not know about Ron Wyatt is that he had claimed to have found the dried blood of Jesus Christ on the covering of the Ark of the covenant. That would be commonly called the mercy seat. How do we know it is the actual blood of Jesus Christ? Well according to Wyatt it has 23 chromosomes instead of 46, the normal number for living human beings. You can even look at a you tube video of some sort of laboratorian scrape out some of his dried blood and place it in some sterile water. strangely you will see that she does not wear gloves either. He then shows some poor resolution video microscopy of moving objects, which to my eyes which are quite used to looking at things under the microscope appears to be Brownian motion and the natural movement of a freshly mounted water based slide. (see also the You Tube of brownian motion). Wyatt when seeing this motion says that the blood is still alive.

But why is the blood of Jesus Christ on the mercy seat? Well according to Wyatt at the crucification there was an earthquake as the Bible records (Matt. 27:51), apparently the one that opened the graves and opened a fissure from the post hole of the cross down to the hidden Ark of the Covenant, the ark still hidden from the days of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem.

What is most interesting to me aside from the sheer hubris of the man to make such claims with no evidence to back him up, oh also he talked to angels who told him that the Ark and the Ten commandments on tablets of stone will be revealed when the mark of the beast is applied as they were there when he discovered it prematurely it seems. A bit too late according to Adventist mythology about probation closing with the mark of the beast. What is it in his and apparently Adventist thinking that makes them think that God needs to perform a miracle so that Christ blood falls on a disused mercy seat hidden away. At one time the Ark of the Covenant was the symbol of the presence of God, but was it the focus of the presence of God hidden away for hundreds of years that needed the blood of the incarnated God to be sprinkled on it?

It becomes another of the symbol over the substance excuses popular today. When the substance was here Wyatt feels that the symbol must be involved. The blood of Christ brought to symbolically to God so that God can forgive. But Christ is God, God does not need blood to forgive. The whole point was that God does forgive even to the point of His enemies rejecting and killing Christ. He still forgave and even after death rose to show the power of God even over our greatest enemy death. As the book of Hebrews says.

Heb 10:19-22 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (NIV)

Symbols to express the reality, in many ways people like Ron Wyatt have their theology completely backward. Thus they invent things to make their version sound good. But as in this case it shows how little they really know and how little their followers know. Ultimately as with any false information they bring disrupt upon themselves and Adventism and Christianity.