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So there is a movie out called 2012. Now, in all honesty I have not seen this film, perhaps one day I will watch it, but not right now.
However, with all this interest in 2012, I decided to look into it more. First off, who are the Mayans? Are they really gone from this earth? Or are some people still have a Mayan heritage still alive? To give you an idea on some basic facts that we can anchor to things in our history that we know, here is the following information:
-- The Maya area was initially inhabited around the 10th century BC. Recent discoveries of Maya occupation at Cuello in Belize have been carbon dated to around 2600 BC
We have a basis for when the Mayan people were walking the earth. Feel free to go to Wikipedia for more information on them. There is plenty there.
Now, are these people really gone? Are there still some Mayans? Ed Dickerson wrote a story on the Mayan Calendar for 2012. He begins by stating that he went to this country and during his stay he came across someone who used a dialect from the Mayans. (www.signstimes.com/
In
December 2012, at the winter solstice, when the sun and the earth
precisely align with the galactic equator, the Mayan Long Count calendar
will come to an end. Its beginning points back to a time five centuries
before the pyramids, 1,500 years before the Exodus. The midpoint came
around the time Daniel spent a night in the lions’ den. Two full
millennia have passed since the birth of Christ, and still the long
count continues. But now, according to this calendar, the end of this
world cycle is in sight.
You
may wonder what difference it makes. After all, aren’t the Mayas long
gone? Actually, although the Mayan civilization came to an end long
before Columbus’s first voyage, the Maya as a people still exist in
Central America. I discovered this personally some years ago, when as a
young man, I bargained with an Indian woman over the price of some
woolen capes at a marketplace in Chichicastenango, Guatemala. As we
haggled, I slowly realized that her Spanish was no better than my own
few words. Later I learned that she spoke Quiche (KEE-chay), one of the
Mayan dialects that still live in the mountains of Central America.
A
few weeks later, walking through the vast complex of Mayan buildings at
Copan, Honduras, I found it impossible not to be impressed with the
achievements of this people who lived so long ago. I also understood why
some people would credit them with prophetic insight. The magnificent
structures, including temples, were vast man-made mountains of stone
aligned precisely with the movements of the sun. There was a “ball
court” with its stone goal ring, where victory and defeat determined who
would be sacrificed to the gods and who would live. I saw stelae, their
rectangular columns taller than a man, intricately carved with images
of great leaders and covered with numbers representing dates.
Always dates. The Mayas were obsessed with time.
The
Mayan civilization emerged around 500 B.C., and it dominated
Mesoamerica for centuries. Yet nearly everything we know about them came
to light during the last century.
The
Mayas kept records on tree bark, which they formed into books by
folding the leaves accordion-style. But their great cities were
abandoned, their civilization replaced by the Aztecs and others before
the arrival of the Spanish. Unfortunately, most of their books were
destroyed by Cortez and the priests that accompanied him during the
Spanish conquest in A.D. 1519. Only four of these ancient Mayan books
are known to exist today. With the books gone, most of the remaining
evidence of their civilization exists in stone carvings lost in the
jungles of Mesoamerica. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that
explorers for the Wrigley Company, seeking sources of chicle for chewing
gum, stumbled upon the remnants of the Mayan civilization overgrown by
rainforests...
The
Mayas saw time as an ever-changing river, not of water, but of energy,
ebbing and flowing, full of crosscurrents and eddies, making a sort of
music as it flowed along. Their weeks, which consisted of thirteen days,
were known as “tones.” For the Mayas, dates designated both a point in
time and the “energy signature” of the universe at any one point in
time.
Their
fascination with time led them to devise at least 17 calendars, many of
them far more accurate even than the Gregorian calendar we use today.
Viewing time as a river of energy, the Mayas considered their calendars
to be prophetic, describing the energy state of the universe past,
present, and future. And they took a long view—a very long view.
The
Mayan sacred calendar, called the Tzolkin, consisted of the 26,000-
year cycle of the Pleiades that was then condensed into 260 days.
The
260-day Tzolkin used 13 numbers or “tones” and 20 “glyphs,” which
represented various things in the real world. Children were named after
the tone and glyph of their birth, such as “1 Monkey,” or “12 Storm.”
The Mayas believed that the day of a person’s birth was the day he
“stepped into the River of Time,” and it described who he was and
defined his relationship to the universe.
This
sacred calendar is still being used for divination by the traditional
Mayas all over the Yucatan, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras.
The Long Count calendar.
But the calendar exciting all the interest these days is the Mayan Long
Count calendar. Twenty days in this calendar made a uinal, the Maya
equivalent of a month. Eighteen uinals made a tun, the Mayan civil year
of 360 days. Twenty years made a katun, and 20 katuns made up a baktun.
After 13 baktuns—5,200 years— the numbers reset. At that time, in the
Mayan view, the level of energy changed and the world with it. And while
the tones and glyphs repeat, the Mayas believed they did so at a higher
energy level each time.
This
would be similar to the musical notes on a piano. Starting at middle C
and progressing up the scale, every eighth white key is another C an
octave higher, vibrating exactly twice as fast as the previous C. On the
Mayan Long Count calendar, every baktun is a new octave.
The
Long Count calendar began its cycles, its first baktun, in the year
3114 B.C., so the energy has been building up for a very long time.
According to Maya belief, at the end of the thirteenth baktun, this
cycle of the world’s history will come to an end, and the discharge of
that accumulated energy will occur at the winter solstice, on or about
December 21, 2012.
The
ancient Mayans, based on star charting, prophesied that December 21,
2012 would be the end of the world (or at least some form of universal
catastrophe). Meso-American star charting started around 680 B.C. by the
Olmec civilization who were recording astrological patterns in the sky
and eventually shared this information with the Mayans. The Mayans had a
long history of tracking the winter solstice (probably for planting
crops) and creating calendars (at least 17 that we know of). At some
point, they developed the belief that our sun is a god and that the
Milky Way, called the “Sacred Tree,” was a gateway to the afterlife.
After learning from the Olmecs, they began keeping records of the stars’
patterns of movement and continued to do so for the next 200-300 years.
The Mayans then developed their own calendar (The Long Count) ca. 355
B.C. They were able to use their observations and mathematical prowess
to calculate the future movements of stars across the sky. The result
was that the Mayans discovered the effect of the earth’s wobbling as it
spins on its axis. This wobbling rotation causes the stars’ patterns of
movement to drift gradually in the sky (called “precession”) in a
5,125-year cycle. The Mayans also discovered that once every cycle the
dark band at the center of the Milky Way (called the Galactic Equator)
intersects with the Elliptical (the plane of the sun’s movement across
the sky).
During that year, the sun reaches its solstice (a brief moment when the sun’s position in the sky is at its greatest angular distance on the other side of the equatorial plane from the observer) on December 21 for the Northern Hemisphere and June 21 for the Southern Hemisphere. That year, the solstice occurs at the moment of the conjunction of the Galactic Equator with the Milky Way. The year this occurs (in relation to our Gregorian calendar) is A.D. 2012, and happened last on August 11, 3114 B.C. With Mayan mythology teaching that our sun is a god and the Milky Way is the gateway to life and death, the Mayans concluded that this intersection in the past must have been the moment of creation. Mayan hieroglyphs seem to indicate that they believed the next intersection in 2012 would be some sort of end and a new beginning of a cycle. The Mayans also believed that the blood of human sacrifices was what powered the sun and gave it life.
During that year, the sun reaches its solstice (a brief moment when the sun’s position in the sky is at its greatest angular distance on the other side of the equatorial plane from the observer) on December 21 for the Northern Hemisphere and June 21 for the Southern Hemisphere. That year, the solstice occurs at the moment of the conjunction of the Galactic Equator with the Milky Way. The year this occurs (in relation to our Gregorian calendar) is A.D. 2012, and happened last on August 11, 3114 B.C. With Mayan mythology teaching that our sun is a god and the Milky Way is the gateway to life and death, the Mayans concluded that this intersection in the past must have been the moment of creation. Mayan hieroglyphs seem to indicate that they believed the next intersection in 2012 would be some sort of end and a new beginning of a cycle. The Mayans also believed that the blood of human sacrifices was what powered the sun and gave it life.
All
the so-called “Mayan prophecies of 2012” are nothing more than wildly
speculative extrapolations, which are based on the yet uncertain
interpretations by scholars of Mayan hieroglyphs. However, the truth is
that apart from the astrological convergence, there is little indication
that the Mayans prophesied anything specific regarding the events of
this distant future. The Mayans were not prophets; they were not even
able to predict their own cultural extinction. They were great
mathematicians and accomplished sky watchers, but they were also a
brutally violent tribal people with a primitive understanding of natural
phenomena, subscribing to archaic beliefs and the barbaric practices of
blood-letting and human sacrifice.
You’ve
no doubt heard about the year 2012, when cataclysmic and apocalyptic
events are predicted to occur, possibly precipitating the end of the
world. Numerous books have been written about 2012, and Hollywood has
produced a science fiction film called 2012: We Were Warned that’s set
for release in early November this year. It depicts global disaster on a
massive scale. And it’s all based on the Mayan Long Count calendar.
Surely
the sophistication and complexity of Mayan mathematics— they were the
first to discover and use the digit zero—make their predictions
difficult to ignore. And, for all our differences from the Mayas, we
moderns share a fascination with the future and a desire to control
events, or, failing that, at least to foresee them.
Now, in both articles above, each one gets into what the Bible says about this prophecy. Let's look a a few brief verses about prophecy. Mr. Dickerson does this so well, I will quote what he has written:
How
does all this relate to the Bible’s prediction of the end? Actually,
there are some similarities. The Old Testament book of Joel, using
imagery the Mayas would have recognized, warns of “wonders in the
heavens / and on the earth, / blood and fire and billows of smoke. / The
sun will be turned to darkness / and the moon to blood” (Joel 2:30,
31).
Jesus
declared that at the end of the world, “ ‘There will be great
earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful
events and great signs from heaven. . . . Signs in the sun, moon and
stars’ ” (Luke 21:11, 25).
Nor
will all of these miraculous signs originate with God. Paul warned the
Thessalonians that “the work of Satan [will be] displayed in all kinds
of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders” (2 Thessalonians 2:9). And
Revelation depicts a false prophet who is empowered to perform “great
and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to
earth in full view of men. . . . [In order to deceive] the inhabitants
of the earth” (Revelation 13:13, 14).
Will
all of this take place at the end of the Long Count calendar?
Certainly, we would all like to know. The twelve disciples asked Jesus
directly, “ ‘What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the
age? ” (Matthew 24:3). In His reply, Jesus warned, “ ‘Watch out that no
one deceives you’ ” (verse 4). Then, after describing a series of events
close to the end, Jesus declared, “ ‘When you see all these things, you
know that [My return] is near, right at the door’ ” (verse 33). Many
Bible students agree that we live in the times described by Jesus; that
His return is indeed “near, right at the door.”
But
what about December 21, 2012? Jesus also cautioned us that “ ‘no one
knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the
Son, but only the Father’ ” (verse 36). “ ‘Therefore keep watch,’ ” He
said, “ ‘because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. . . .
You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when
you do not expect him’ ” (verses 42, 44).
Notice
that Jesus said neither we nor even the angels in heaven know when He
will return. So if the angels do not know the time, then neither did the
ancient Mayan priests and astrologers who devised the Long Count
calendar. The Long Count calendar of the Mayas—with its precise
calculation of the positions of heavenly bodies over a span of more than
5,000 years—is a remarkable human achievement, but it is not prophetic.
The Mayas demonstrated great knowledge about mathematics, but God
“determines the number of the stars / and calls them each by name”
(Psalm 147:4). The Mayas may have observed the Pleiades and based a
calendar on their movements, but God “ ‘is the Maker of the Bear and
Orion, / the Pleiades and the constellations’ ” (Job 9:9).
Will
the world as we know it end? Certainly! Will it end on December 12,
2012, as some believe the Long Count calendar predicts? Probably not. It
is God who set the planets and stars on their courses. He determines
their movements; they do not determine His. But the Bible is clear: we
know that His coming is “near, even at the door,” and that “in just a
very little while, ‘He who is coming will come and will not delay’ ”
(Hebrews 10:37).
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Now, I wanted to add one thing in. Prophecy. I enjoy this subject so well only because I have understood it. If you don't know already, Daniel is a prophetic book. Just to show you it's truth within the book, here is the prophecy about the Golden Statue.
Remember Nebuchadnezzar? And the dream about the statue he had? Let us read the verse in the Bible.
Daniel 2:26-35“The
king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, Are you
able to make known unto me the dream which I have seen, and the
interpretation thereof? 27 Daniel answered in the presence of the king,
and said, The secret which the king has demanded cannot the wise men,
the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, show unto the king; 28
But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to
the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Your dream,
and the visions of your head upon your bed, are these; 29 As for you, O
king, your thoughts came into your mind upon your bed, what should come
to pass hereafter: and he that revealeth secrets maketh known to you
what shall come to pass. 30 But as for me, this secret is not revealed
to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living, but for their
sakes that shall make known the interpretation to the king, and that you
mightest know the thoughts of your heart.” 31“You, O king, sawest, and
behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent,
stood before you; and the form thereof was terrible. 32 This image's
head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and
his thighs of brass, 33 His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part
of clay. 34 You sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands,
which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and
brake them to pieces. 35 Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the
silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the
chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away,
that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.” NKJV
This
dream was related to the king in the form of an image with different
types of metals, something the idolatrous king could relate to. The
brightness of it was excellent and the form was terrible/dreadful.
The
head of this image was made not just of gold, but of fine gold. The
chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, and
feet part of iron and part of clay. Then a stone that was cut out
without hands smote the image at the feet and not only was the iron and
clay broken, but all the other metals were broken with it. They became
as chaff of the summer threshing floor and the wind came and blew them
away. No place was found for them, and the stone became a great mountain
and filled the whole earth.
A
few things to notice are that each metal is inferior in value to the
other, but though they are inferior each metal is stronger than the
preceding one.
Daniel 2:36-39 “This
is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the
king. 37 You, O king, are a king of kings: for the God of heaven has
given you a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. 38 And wheresoever
the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the
heaven has he given into thine hand, and has made you ruler over them
all. You are this head of gold. 39 And after you shall arise another
kingdom inferior to you, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall
bear rule over all the earth.”
Now
Daniel gives the interpretation. He starts by telling the king that he
is a king of kings, but also reminds him that it is the God of heaven
that gave to him this kingdom and power, strength, and glory, so as to
not allow the king any pride or self glory in the matter, but remind him
of the true God. Babylon thought itself above retribution, and trusted
in their spiritual leaders, but they were being lead astray by them.
(Isaiah 47:7-8, 13) Babylon should not have been glorying in its own
wisdom but glorying in the fact that they were given an understanding of
and a knowledge of the true God. (Jeremiah 9:23-24)
Verse
38 tells us a little of how great his dominion was and to the extent of
what he ruled over. Daniel now reveals to us, and to Nebuchadnezzar,
that he is the head of gold. Babylon ruled the world from 606 B.C. to 538 B.C.
After
the Babylonian kingdom there was to arise another kingdom inferior to
it, as silver is inferior to gold but stronger. From chapter 8 and verse
20, and 5:28-31, we see that it was the Medes and Persians that took
over the Babylonian kingdom in 538 B.C. under the rulership of Darius
the Mede, 5:31. They were inferior in wealth, luxury, and magnificence,
not in power or in the extent of the kingdom for they were mightier and
ruled over a larger area than Babylon. Medo-Persia ruled from 538 B.C. to 331 B.C.
Another
third kingdom, the belly and thighs of brass, was to arise after the
Medo-Persia kingdom. This kingdom was the Grecian empire as stated in
8:20-21. The final deciding battle was at Arbela, 331 B.C., between
Alexander the Great and Darius Codomannus the last of the line of the
old Persian kings. Alexander and his Grecian army were out numbered 20
to 1 by the Persians, but Alexander was entirely victorious with Darius
being killed by his own men when refusing to make a more hasty retreat.
Alexander now became absolute lord of the Persian Empire, to a greater
extent than any of the Persian kings before him. The Bible says that
this kingdom was to bear rule over all the earth. The Grecian kingdom
did, for it ruled from Greece across to the borders of India and down to
Egypt. Greece ruled from 331 B.C. to 168 B.C.
Daniel 2:40 “And
the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh
in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these,
shall it break in pieces and bruise.”
Here
we find the fourth kingdom introduced. It was to be as strong as iron,
for iron breaks and subdues all things and would break all the other
metals before it. It would break them in pieces and bruise. This Rome
did. It conquered Greece and subdued all things and broke nations and
bruised them. It was always victorious in war, and made its way to the
Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the ocean. The nations fell and
were broken by the iron monarchy of Rome.
The
Bible makes a clear statement in Luke 2:1 that Rome ruled the world,
for you cannot tax the world unless you rule it. In its height it ruled
the whole south of Europe, France, England, the greater part of the
Netherlands, Switzerland, and the south of Germany, Hungary, Turkey,
Greece, and parts of Asia and Africa. Rome ruled from 168 B.C. to 476 A.D.
Daniel 2:40“And
the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh
in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these,
shall it break in pieces and bruise.”
Here
we find the fourth kingdom introduced. It was to be as strong as iron,
for iron breaks and subdues all things and would break all the other
metals before it. It would break them in pieces and bruise. This Rome
did. It conquered Greece and subdued all things and broke nations and
bruised them. It was always victorious in war, and made its way to the
Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the ocean. The nations fell and
were broken by the iron monarchy of Rome.
The
Bible makes a clear statement in Luke 2:1 that Rome ruled the world,
for you cannot tax the world unless you rule it. In its height it ruled
the whole south of Europe, France, England, the greater part of the
Netherlands, Switzerland, and the south of Germany, Hungary, Turkey,
Greece, and parts of Asia and Africa. Rome ruled from 168 B.C. to 476 A.D.
Daniel 2:41-43 “And
whereas you sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part
of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the
strength of the iron, forasmuch as you sawest the iron mixed with miry
clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of
clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 43 And
whereas you sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle
themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to
another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.”
After
the Roman Empire the kingdom was to be divided, but with some having
the strength of iron and others being weak like clay. The Western Roman
Empire divided into ten separate parts as will now be listed.
The ten divisions of Rome
1. Heruli. 6. Burgundians.
2. Ostrogoths. 7. Lombards.
3. Vandals. 8. Anglo/Saxons.
4. Franks. 9. Alamanni.
5. Visigoths. 10. Seuvi.
Mingle themselves with the seed of men - Even though the kingdoms were divided, the monarchies of different countries tried to unite them through marriage and thus gain the supremacy this way. The only thing it resulted in was family feuds between countries.
Many
have tried to rule the world through military conquest, Charlemagne,
Napoleon, and Hitler to name a few. But all efforts have come to naught
for the Bible is in opposition to them all, as it is written “they shall
not cleave one to another”, for clay does not cleave to iron and vice
versa.
Clay and Iron – The
iron and clay are much more than just the divided kingdoms. Whilst
looking back through this prophecy, all the metals have been
representative of kingdoms/nations/states. But what does the Bible
represent clay as?
In
Jeremiah 18:6 and Isaiah 64:8 we find that God’s people, which are His
church, (Acts 7:38 ) are likened unto clay. But this is miry or dirty
clay, which means a dirty or apostate church. Daniel 2 shows to us that
there is to be a uniting of church and state during the time frame after
the Roman Empire.
But God also shows to us that church and state should not be united
together for the very fact of that, iron does not mix with clay, it is
not God’s system to mix the two together they are to remain separate.
Now the above does continue, but that gives you a taste of Biblical prophecy in the works. Daniel prophesied 10 kingdoms after the fall of Rome. Within history we have these 10 kingdoms. 7 are modern day Europe:
The ten divisions of Rome
Ostrogoths - Exterminated.
Vandals - Exterminated.
Vandals - Exterminated.
Franks - France
Suevi - Portugal
Suevi - Portugal
Alemanni -Germany
Anglo-Saxons - England
Anglo-Saxons - England
Heruli - Exterminated
Lombards - Italy
Lombards - Italy
Burgundians - Switzerland
Visigoths - Spain
Visigoths - Spain
Peace Unto You!
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