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Dr. Bob Holt,
md
“..a
man entered the room,-- having a dirt brush in his hand…”
So
said Ellen G. White, after one of her famous dreams.
Ellen White, a modern day visionary of the 19th and
early 20th century had dreamed that her numerological and
religious messages, seen in her dream as a Jewel Casket, had become
totally disorganized by visitors to her display.
Not only that, but some were thrown on the floor, and counterfeit
coins and spurious jewels had been added.
“While I was thus weeping and mourning for my great
loss and accountability, I remembered God, and earnestly prayed that He
would send me help. -- “Immediately the door opened, and a man entered the room, when the
people had all left it; and he, having a dirt brush in his hand, opened
the windows, and began to brush the dirt and rubbish from the room.”
EGW “Early Writings” pg.83
The usual technique used by all archaeologists around the world
relies on dirt brushes once a spade has removed the major part of
dirt and debris that have covered up the artifacts that remain in the
ground of old civilizations. Workers
at these “digs”, often volunteers and college students, carefully go
over new ground containing small pieces of pottery, and occasionally bones
and coins and jewelry, and carefully brush away the dirt, being careful
not to brush away anything of historical value.
Typically they are so thorough in this process that entire pieces
of pottery can be glued back together and be identified as belonging to a
civilization no longer around. Once the whole site is completely excavated, it can
often be determined why these people who lived there long ago no longer
live there. Or what
natural or political disaster caused this town or city to move or cease to
exist. Compared with what other archaeologists have found in other
“digs” these events can be dated rather exactly, and history
“corrected” to reflect these newly established dates.
Radiocarbon dating techniques applied to bones and other organic
materials have added to the precision of these dates.
That Jesus and his angels sent both
William Miller and Ellen White a dream in which a Man with a Dirt Brush
brings order out of confusion after others have trashed their
respective jewel caskets to me indicates that Men with Dirt Brushes, in
this case easily identifiable as historians and archaeologists, should be
those allowed to settle many religious disputes that have gone on
unresolved for many centuries.
I began my own career as one of these Men with Dirt Brushes
in October of 1989 when I met Ronald E. Wyatt at the Jerusalem
Hotel near the Damascus Gate of the old walled city of Jerusalem. His
search for the historical Truth about various Biblical characters
and events had led him to Egypt and the Sinai, and the Red Sea, so I later
followed him to these other places, also. This book is about my adventures
on these trips.
Soon after I met Ronald Wyatt, I
flew out to Southern California to meet Ron’s former associate, David
Fasold, who helped Ron in both identifying a boat-shaped formation in
Eastern Turkey (near Mount Ararat) as the Ark of Noah, and also the
one who accompanied him into Saudia Arabia to find and identify the real Mountain
of Moses.. This
man, David Fasold, accompanied
me to Solana Beach, where I interviewed Larry Williams, who with
Howard Blum, wrote the best-seller, “The Gold of Exodus”.
Later in 1990 I toured Dogubayazit, Turkey, with Fasold.
Thus began my “adventures” as The Man with a Dirt Brush.
Copyright
Notice – All
Rights Reserved – April 2010
Hendersonville, North Carolina
Dr. Robert Flewelling Holt, MD, MPH
Ronald E. Wyatt
Ronald
Wyatt was a male anesthesia nurse who worked in various hospitals around
the Nashville, Tennessee area
to pay the rent, and lived in a modest cottage in the southern part of
Nashville. He tolerated
the usual operating room jokes about making a living “passing gas”,
and sometimes even laughed in the appropriate places.
His mop of gray hair and white beard made him an impressive figure,
once he had taken off his operating room mask, and out of his scrubs in
street clothes he was heavy-set enough that
people
would move over and let him pass if he appeared to be in a hurry.
There was
another side to Ronald Wyatt that his operating room patients didn’t know
about, which might have caused them concern as they “went under the knife”,
had they known. He was
a very religious man, with a serious agenda, and concerned because the Lord was
coming back soon. And Ron had not yet unearthed the Ark of the Covenant. A task that he firmly believed must be accomplished
before Christ could return in glory, and set up a rule of law on this unruly
earth. The standard for
all people on earth would then be the “Ten Commandments” found in the Ark of
the Covenant, and how could the earth be judged by something that had been lost
since the age of the prophet Jeremiah?
Or perhaps even before the prophet Jeremiah?
To be sure, several versions of the “Ten Commandments” are recorded
in the Bible. One version in Exodus
chapter 20. And another
version recorded in Deuteronomy chapter 5.
But since these two versions are at variance with each other, most
markedly so in the wording of the Sabbath commandment, it would be nice to find
the original. Reportedly written on stone tablets by the very finger
of God
Almighty! Once this
ambivalence about the Sabbath was cleared up, then perhaps the entire world
could be
convinced
to keep the right day. Ron
Wyatt was a Seventh-day Sabbath-keeper himself, and totally convinced that
everyone else on earth should be one also.
To an ordinary person, the idea of finding and retrieving the Ark of the
Covenant would seem far above the expectations one could expect to achieve.
To prepare for such a task one would need extensive training in
archaeology, contacts with distinguished professors, and perhaps years of study
of every known book on that subject.
And then there is the problem of finance. How does an ordinary person, not a millionaire, pay for
equipment to dig, money for hotels in foreign lands, and expensive airplane
tickets to the Middle East? Ron
Wyatt, over the years, came up with his own unique solutions to all these
problems.
God Will Show You!
One does not
need to research an extensive library of books if God is going to show you what
you are looking for, and where you can find it.
And one does not need an extensive experience in archaeology either,
unless one expects to work closely with other archaeologists, who might indeed
expect such experience, and even demand it!
Ron Wyatt had come from a religious background in which such training
might be considered a detriment not an advantage. He read the books of Sister Ellen G. White, a
prophetess who herself had no formal training past the third grade. This had not slowed down Sister White from providing expert
opinions on almost anything one can imagine, including, oddly enough, the
location of the Ark of the Covenant.
In Ron Wyatt’s way of looking at things, if Sister Ellen White could
see the Ark of the Covenant in vision by God’s power, then God might indeed
show Ron Wyatt the location of the literal Ark of the Covenant by that same
power.
By the time I
met Ronald Wyatt, this unusual person had indeed found a lot of things that
trained archaeologists had been looking unsuccessfully for many centuries. By
merely looking at a picture of a “boat-shaped” formation in Eastern Turkey
near Mount Ararat published in
Life
Magazine, Ron had determined to his own satisfaction that this
might indeed be what was left of the real Noah’s Ark.
It took him several decades of difficult work, the help of a nautical
expert and fellow adventurer named David Fasold, and some expensive equipment
borrowed from a millionaire food processing magnate to prove his theories to the
satisfaction of the Turkish authorities. Today there is a state sponsored museum
at Masher Dagi, titled in Turkish Nu’un
Gemisi (Noah’s Big Boat) mostly because of Ron Wyatt’s efforts.
Ronald
Wyatt’s “Angels”
Because he was not a millionaire, Ronal Wyatt had to get money from other
ordinary people who were interested in what he was doing to be able to keep
going back to the Mount Ararat region of Turkey, and other projects he became
interested in. Either that or wait a very long time between trips and save
up a larger proportion of his earnings as an anesthesia nurse until he had
enough to go again. His
search for the Ark of the
Covenant
became a major reason for church people to help him, because many people in
his
church also believed that the Ark of the Covenant must be found.
For similar reasons to those supplied by Ron Wyatt.
So Ron developed a circuit of churches he was welcome to lecture in, and
for practical reasons these were mostly about a day’s drive from Nashville,
Tennessee. But sometimes he could be enticed to come further, if
he thought by doing so, money for another “expedition” could be raised.
I first heard of Ronald Wyatt in 1988 because of the interest in what he
was doing by the Rapture 88 Movement, a mostly Pentecostal group who were quite certain that the so-called
“Rapture of the Saints” would occur in the fall of 1988.
Anything that supported the idea that time was short before Christ’s
Second Coming was of interest to these people.
And Ronald Wyatt’s earlier discovery of the Ark of Noah near Ararat,
and his latest claims at that time of knowing where the Ark of the Covenant was
fit into this category. Jerry McLamb of the Rapture
88 Movement, and Doctor Ralph Meinhardt of the Elizabethtown North Carolina
Seventh-day Adventist Church invited Ron Wyatt to speak, and Doctor Meinhardt
bought a videotape produced by Ron Wyatt.
One of the things Ron used to interest people in his activities was his
angel stories.
I watched Doctor Meinhardt’s videotape and heard about Ronald Wyatt’s
angel stories from people who attended the meeting at Elizabethtown.
But I can’t remember attending the meeting myself.
At that time I was doing a lot of Emergency Room work
on
the North Carolina coast, and playing as an actor in the Worthy is the Lamb passion play at Cape Carteret.
I decided that if I had the opportunity to listen to Ronald Wyatt, and my
schedule permitted, I would do so.
Such an opportunity arose in the summer of 1989.
Ronald Wyatt spoke at the Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church,
and during the Sabbath School class told several of his angel stories.
The story I remember most clearly was one in which someone, I believe it
was Ron,
was
stuck in a snow bank in a blizzard with the tail of the car in such a position
that the car might be hit by any car coming along. Having no effective snow shovel in the car, the driver
was in a quandary about what to do next.
Just then, out of the mist of the snow-storm stepped two strong young
men, and tugged and pushed on the car while he steered and spun the wheels.
Once free, he turned to offer the young men a ride, but they were gone.
They had completely disappeared without a trace.
That’s strange, he thought, and finally settled for the explanation
that they were angels.
Ronald Wyatt had other angel stories, and he often told them.
Always they looked like ordinary human beings, and were dressed in
ordinary clothes. It was
their actions that identified them as angels, or something that they said.
Often, Ron claimed, they could “read your mind”, or answer questions
before you really asked them. Out
loud, that is. I can’t remember
Ronald Wyatt ever describing an angel with wings, or female angels
with long golden hair, as they are usually pictured in Bibles and on religious
posters.
After the church service in Hendersonville, during which Ron Wyatt showed
some of his videos, and the buffet dinner afterwards, I met Ron
personally for the first time, and we talked for a few minutes.
I let him know I was a medical doctor with a little money to spend, and I
would like to share expenses with him on one of his trips.
I let him know I was also interested in Biblical Numerology, and that I
felt that Yom Kippur
of
1989, which would occur in early October, seemed to me to be a very interesting
date from the perspective of prophetic fulfillment. He told me where he usually stayed in Jerusalem.
An Arab Hotel not far from the Damascus Gate.
I told him the date I expected to arrive in Jerusalem.
“I might see you then, Pilgrim!” he replied.
At the “Jerusalem Hotel”: October 1989
I took the long taxi-ride from Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel
Aviv to Jerusalem, along with four or five other tourists.
Faster than the bus, not much more expensive with shared fare, and you
get dropped off at your hotel. Very
convenient!
There
are many hotels called “Jerusalem Hotel”, so I had to guide the driver
verbally to the Damascus Gate of the old walled city, then to the Egged
bus-station, across from
which
was my hotel. I found a
small single room at a very fair price, paid for a week’s lodging with
breakfast, and asked if they expected a gray bearded tall American named Ron
Wyatt to arrive any time soon. “His
assistant is here already,” the proprietor said.
And pointed to a young man from Florida named Randy Osborne. Ron Wyatt
arrived about 7 PM and we all walked up the hill to the downtown restaurants and
had supper.
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Ron Wyatt had his own ideas about how things should be done, and by the
next morning, he had purchased milk and dry cereal to supplement the bread and
cheese and dried fruit that makes up the traditional “Continental” breakfast
in such hotels. Osborne, Wyatt,
and I had breakfast together in a cellar room opposite the hotel’s kitchen.
Ron made his famous hash, and it was obvious he had the run of the place.
After breakfast we rented a car.
A small square thing with room for the three of us, and a little space
for tools, laundry, groceries and such.
Ron and I split the car rental fee.
Since the car had an Arab license plate, we didn’t expect it to be
vandalized, and it wasn’t. We were soon sailing around the city on what seemed to
me to be the wrong side of the roads, but Ron Wyatt seemed to be used to that
also. And knew when to blow
the horn, and knew when to pull over instead.
For lunch we had falafels washed down with Coca-Cola.
Not usually a cola addict, Ron always drank it every meal in Israel.
Ron
said, “It kills all the germs in your sandwich. They fertilize these gardens with human poop, and unless you
want to get traveler’s diarrhea in two days, you’d better drink CocaCola
every meal you eat out buying Arab
sandwiches.” And so we did.
At
the Excavation Site
One of Ronald Wyatt’s best kept secrets at that time was the location
of where he was digging for the Ark of the Covenant.
It was not far from where Jeremiah’s cave was supposed to be located in
olden times, and Ron himself believed it was Jeremiah the prophet who hid the
Ark, not long before Nebuchadnezzar’s final assault on Jerusalem about 600 BC.
Ron assumes Jeremiah would know where the tunnels were under Jerusalem,
and could, with some priestly help, pull off this feat.
And hide the Ark in another tunnel he knew about near his own cave.
Over the years
before our trip together in 1989, Ron had found a large stone box like
miraculous way. His arm
involuntarily jerked up, and his finger pointed to the location.
And he heard his own voice saying, “There is where the Ark of the
Covenant is located!” Angels
again!
After many years digging, and many blind holes, Ron found this old stone
vault, and was able to look inside with a tube-shaped medical instrument with a
fiber-optic light system.
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Inside he saw shapes he believes include the Ark of the Covenant, Table
of Shew Bread, and many other things.
The list keeps growing the longer he tells the story.
I have since obtained a drawing of part of what he actually saw.
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I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of such a vault, or its
reported contents.
What
I can indeed confirm is that there are lots of tunnels under Jerusalem, and that
some of them extended from the temple area to where Ron was digging.
And that subsequent road construction in our modern era has blocked most,
if not all of these tunnels. I
later
did
some exploring of these tunnels by myself, and got lost.
But that’s another story for another time.
Ron Wyatt had
a profound belief that it was “God’s Will” that he would finally excavate a way to get what he
claims to have found out to the outside world, so that everyone on earth can
finally view the Ark of the Covenant, and perhaps “see”, or at least
I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of such a vault, or its
reported contents.
What
I can indeed confirm is that there are lots of tunnels under Jerusalem, and that
some of them extended from the temple area to where Ron was digging.
And that subsequent road construction in our modern era has blocked most,
if not all of these tunnels. I
later
did
some exploring of these tunnels by myself, and got lost.
But that’s another story for another time.
Ron Wyatt had
a profound belief that it was “God’s Will” that he would finally excavate a way to get what he
claims to have found out to the outside world, so that everyone on earth can
finally view the Ark of the Covenant, and perhaps “see”, or at least
know
that they exist, the original two tables of stone on which the “Ten
Commandments” were written by the finger of Yahweh or Allah, the Lord God
Almighty. Ron put the newest
person about to learn about his secret location
through a test. Sort of an
initiation procedure. Like a
“hazing” for a Greek Letter sorority.
He let the new person into his “dig”, which consisted of a maze of
tunnels far down into the earth, with slippery boards here and there, and plenty of holes that lead nowhere.
And prayed his “Judas” prayer.
Ron allowed
the new person or persons to snoop around for a few hours by themselves.
If in that period of time they did not get lost, break a leg, or get
stuck so bad in one of these very small tunnels that it would take a block and
tackle to get them out, then it was a “sign” that they were acceptable to
God and the angels, and could be shown the real tunnel, and perhaps help dig.
I got stuck, and my rope broke, but got out of my predicament by myself.
So I “passed”. Randy Osborne did most of the digging.
I did other “chores”. I
must have been a sight! An
Emergency Room doctor, not dressed in white, or in scrubs, but in black
coveralls, with a droopy black hat, thick gloves, and covered from head to foot
with coal black dirt, fine stone dust, and a little clay mud.
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Two frames from the available-light video I took underground
at Ron Wyatt’s
Excavation site . On
the left is me with white beard and glasses.
On the right
Is electrical wires, pails, and the electrical chisel drill
we used to cut the rock.
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On the left is a picture
of Ron Wyatt’s son, who accompanied him on some of his earlier
expeditions to Jerusalem to attempt to find and dig up the Ark of
the Covenant. The
stone wall in the background is located in the “Garden Tomb”
where many Protestants believe Jesus was buried.
Ron believed Jesus was crucified about where his son is
standing, and that the sign declaring Jesus to be “King of the
Jews” was posted overhead on this wall.
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A
further benefit to all Christians, had Ron Wyatt been able to excavate the
Ark of the Covenant here completely, would have been to go a long ways
towards definitely identifying the place where Jesus was crucified. And also demonstrating Jesus’ high regard for the Ten
Commandments.
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Ron
Wyatt and I were both hoping on this occasion, during Yom Kippur of 1989,
that an implied prophecy occurring in the writings of Ellen G. White, the
Adventist “Prophetess” that just before Christ’s second coming, the
Ten Commandments would be more clearly seen would be fulfilled.
And that our joint efforts at Ron’s site here in the “Garden
Tomb” would be a major part in this prophecy being fulfilled.
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Over the 5 years or more that Ron Wyatt had been digging here, he
had found other indications at this site that might support this theory.
He claimed to have found holes in the bedrock where the main
support beams of three crosses had been inserted, and a wooden plug
inserted in one of these holes so that it was no longer used.
Also he claimed to have traced a crack in the rock from the
original ground level going downward towards the cave in which he later
was able to see, through a fiber-optic instrument, what looked like the
dimly-lit outline of the Ark of the Covenant.
He also found an extension in the rock that he thought was used as
an altar by early Christians, who knew where Christ was crucified, and
worshipped here.
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