Original subtitles

In cultures throughout the world, we find ancient stories

that seem to describe advanced technology.

And for me, the most incredible of these stories

comes straight from the Bible

and its description of the golden chest

that was built to house the Ten Commandments--

the Ark of the Covenant.

The Bible tells us that the Ark also provided food

for the Israelites during their 40-year exodus in the desert.

And it was also the Ark that was used as a weapon

to bring down the walls of Jericho.

But just what was this extraordinary device?

Were its powers the result of divine miracles?

Or were they the product

of advanced extraterrestrial technology?

GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: In 2015, the simple act

of replacing a carpet kicked off a war of words

between Israeli scholars and the Muslim authorities

in charge of Judaism's holiest site--

the Dome of the Rock.

When the old carpet was lifted,

it revealed ancient designs in the floor,

a series of mysterious patterns

that Israeli scholars believe could point

to the final resting place

of one of the most sacred objects in the world--

the Ark of the Covenant.

Unfortunately,

before the patterns could be photographed and documented,

workmen began laying the new carpet.

Could the clues to the Ark's location lie hidden,

underneath a thin layer of floor covering?

Or is its location meant to be a secret?

Because if it is ever found,

the powers of the Ark could make it the most powerful

and dangerous weapon on Earth.

NARRATOR: The West Bank.

July 2013.

Ten miles north of the Israeli settlement of Beit El,

archaeologists unearth clay pots, stoves

and a portion of a wall dating back to around 1300 BC.

But the most mundane of their findings here may also be

the most significant--

holes carved into the solid rock ground.

Based on the location and the date of the artifacts,

they believe these holes may have once held

the wooden beams used to support

the tabernacle at Shiloh.

If true, it is the first physical evidence

ever discovered of the ancient sanctuary built to house

what is perhaps the most mysterious religious relic

in the world--

the Ark of the Covenant.

TSOUKALOS: The story of the Ark of the Covenant

is one of the most fascinating

and unexplored stories of the Bible.

The Ark of the Covenant

had some very mysterious powers.

GRAHAM HANCOCK: The Ark of the Covenant was what

took me out of mainstream journalism.

I began to wonder what-what could this thing have been?

NARRATOR: Reproductions of the Ark of the Covenant

can be found in churches, synagogues,

and Masonic temples throughout the world.

It has even been featured in popular culture.

But just what is the Ark of the Covenant?

Mount Sinai.

The 15th century BC.

According to the Bible's book of Exodus,

after the Israelites were released from Egypt,

God summoned Moses to the peak of this holy mountain

and gave him two stone tablets

carved with the Ten Commandments.

He also gave him specific instructions

for building the Ark of the Covenant.

It was the box that was constructed to contain

the two tablets of the Ten Commandments,

which were irradiated with divine power

because they had been touched by the finger of God.

The covenant itself was a contract between God

uh, and the Israelites.

"I will be your God and protect you

provided you keep my commandments."

Israel's end of the deal, then,

was going to be kept in the box,

which is the Ark itself.

NARRATOR: But the Ark of the Covenant

didn't only carry the Ten Commandments.

It was also said to be

the throne of God himself.

In the book of Exodus in the 25th chapter,

the verse is very clear.

God says to Moses,

"V'Asu li mikdash v'shachanti b'tocham."

"Have them make me a holy place and I, God,

I will dwell among them."

And wherever the Ark went,

that power of God went with them.

The Ark is built in...

a reflection of what's called a heavenly ark.

It was built two and a half cubits by one and a half cubits

by one and a half cubits.

So the Ark would've been somewhere in the ballpark

of about a three-by-five-foot rectangular box.

DOWNING: It was going to be covered with gold

on the outside and the inside, and was to have

two gold rings at each of the four corners.

And it was carried with poles

that were run through the rings.

And the orders were that, uh, the poles

should never be removed from the rings.

And the lid was to be made out of gold,

and on each end of the lid were to be, uh, cherubim

or guardian angels, basically, with wings.

NARRATOR: But why was it so important that the Ark

be constructed to such exact specifications?

And why would God-- a spiritual being--

require a physical throne here on Earth?

Perhaps there is an answer

in the Bible's description of Moses

after he returned from Mount Sinai.

BAR TZADOK: After Moses came down from Mount Sinai,

he was glowing-- the Bible says-- that he had to wear

a scarf over his face.

TSOUKALOS: I am fascinated with the idea that Moses--

all of a sudden, his appearance changed.

And, so the idea

that Moses, all of a sudden,

looked different--

we have to ask ourselves why.

NARRATOR: Just what did Moses encounter

on Mount Sinai?

Was it God?

Or was it someone--

or something-- else?

BAR TZADOK: God is clearly an entity

not of this earth,

and by definition, therefore, extraterrestrial.

Where does he come from?

We must recognize that when the ancients are speaking about God,

there is no other term

that we can use to describe

these experiences, other than extraterrestrial.

NARRATOR: After the Ark was built

and the Ten Commandments placed within it,

the Israelites carried it with them on their 40-year exodus

through the desert.

Certain people were allowed to carry it,

and those people were ordained priests.

Aaron, Moses' brother,

and his sons were certainly priests.

It was a prestigious job.

But you had to know what you were doing.

NARRATOR: But why was the Ark considered so dangerous

that it couldn't be touched or even looked at?

According to the Old Testament accounts,

the Ark of the Covenant was not only a powerful device

on its own, it also housed a number

of other important religious relics.

In addition to the Ten Commandments,

it held Aaron's Rod,

the staff that could miraculously

turn into a serpent.

It also held a jar of manna,

an edible starch which reportedly came from the sky.

What we begin to realize is that

the Ark of the Covenant was a sort of tool kit,

and once this tool kit was assembled

we have the fully functioning Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark went before them in the wilderness

and made sure the place where

the children of Israel were to go

would be safe and able

to provide for them in the desert.

Anybody who's been to the Sinai Desert--

you could hardly imagine

two to three million people

having any kind of sustenance

in a desert.

So, therefore, what the Ark

must've accomplished...

was profound.

NARRATOR: The Ark of the Covenant was said

to have protected and provided for the Israelites

during the Exodus.

But how?

TSOUKALOS: What we can read in the Bible is that

they were sustained by something called manna.

And the big question is where did this manna come from?

Well, two engineers

by a name of Rodney Dale

and George Sassoon in the 1970s

proposed that the Ark of the Covenant

was nothing else but a container

in which to store

what they referred to as the Manna Machine.

The Manna Machine was a nuclear-driven device

that dispended food, or manna,

to the Israelites.

CHILDRESS: The Ark of the Covenant is such a mystery,

it could actually create food, supposedly--

the-the manna that they were eating.

It's like some kind of, uh,

super engineering,

duplicating, energy machine.

TSOUKALOS: We have a concise description of it

in the ancient Jewish texts of the Zohar,

which is a part of the Kabbalah

where they describe the ancient of days.

But in reality, "the ancient of days"

is a mistranslation.

The correct translation is:

"the transportable one with the tanks."

Since when is God transportable

and why does he need tanks?

So, in the Zohar, we have concise descriptions

not of God but some type of a machine.

NARRATOR: Did the Ark of the Covenant

really house a machine that provided food

to the Israelites during their 40 years in the desert?

According to ancient astronaut theorists and many

religious scholars, the answer is yes.

But that wasn't the only power the Ark possessed,

for as the Ark could sustain life,

it could also destroy it.

TSOUKALOS: Studies done by NASA have shown that human life

can be sustained for extended periods of time

by consuming nothing more

than chlorella algae-- the same food source

that some researchers claim was produced

by the so-called Manna Machine.

And it has even been proposed by some ancient astronaut theorists

that the day the Hebrews refer to as the Sabbath

was also the actual day on which the machine

would need to be cleaned.

But when you read through all the different accounts

of the Ark of the Covenant, it becomes clear

that this golden chest did much more

than house the Ten Commandments.

It contained powers greater

than any currently devised by man.

NARRATOR: The Jordan River.

A 200-mile border separating

the present-day kingdom of Jordan

from Israel and the West Bank.

In 1400 BC, this waterway

represented one of the final obstacles

to the wandering Israelites' long-awaited entrance

into the Promised Land.

DOWNING: The Ark of the Covenant comes into its own

when Joshua's given the task

of, uh, leading Israel across the Jordan River.

And the story is that the Ark of the Covenant

would go first and be carried

into the Jordan River.

Some energy came forth from the Ark...

causing the waters to literally stop

and ascend, and therefore creating

dry land for the entire children of Israel

to pass on, off into the Holy Land.

NARRATOR: But if this Biblical story is true,

what kind of power could the Ark of the Covenant

have possessed that would cause

a raging river to stand still?

DAVID WILCOCK: What if the people

who wrote these stories were simply reporting on

what they actually were seeing?

If that's true, then the Ark of the Covenant

clearly represents a technology that is more advanced

that anything we have now.

You want to part water, maybe a good way to do it

would be with high-speed winds.

If you blow enough air,

you can get the water out of the way and you can actually,

maybe even, form those two walls of water.

CHILDRESS: There's some kind of technology that they're using

and it's so that they can accomplish their goals

and continue on their journey, and they're able

to use this extraterrestrial technology to do it.

NARRATOR: According to the Bible's book of Joshua,

the Ark of the Covenant once again

proved a powerful ally when the Israelites

arrived on the western banks of the Jordan River,

set on conquering the seemingly impenetrable

walled city of Jericho.

The reputation of the Israelites preceded them.

People were terrified.

They have heard the rumors

of the power of this great and awesome Ark.

They now come to the city of Jericho.

The people were commanded by God:

march around the city walls.

They march around the city once, on the first day.

The next day, they do the very same thing.

The third, fourth, fifth and the sixth days,

the same thing.

On the seventh day, they march around

and then they blow the trumpets

and all the people shout.

BAR TZADOK: Between the marching of the feet,

the sounding of the ram's horns, the shofar,

and with some power, not described, from the Ark--

it enabled the big, stone, mighty walls

of the city of Jericho

to somehow be vibrated

with a earthquake-type force,

which caused them to collapse.

When I hear that they had to walk around Jericho seven times

and then the trumpets were the ones that

allowed for those walls to crumble...

one would have to ask yourselves:

was there something else to it?

DENNIN: Knocking something down, like a wall, with pressure,

is not inconceivable.

So you could imagine trying to do this.

Now, when you look at things,

think of standard examples that we experience.

When the space shuttle lands, we get the sonic boom.

And you can feel it rattling the walls

and you can actually hear it.

[sonic boom thunders]

That's far away.

Imagine getting the sonic boom closer to the object.

You might be able to do significant damage to the wall.

NARRATOR: Could the Israelites actually have witnessed

an advanced technology,

beyond even our own modern capabilities?

A machine that could instantly part waters

and bring down stone walls?

Some ancient astronaut theorists believe the best evidence

that the Ark of the Covenant may have held alien technology

can be found by studying events that took place

300 years after the sacking of Jericho,

when the Ark was stolen.

There are many strange things associated with

the Ark of the Covenant, but the one that very few people

are aware of is that, believe it or not, there actually is

is a connection to creatures that resemble unicorns.

This comes straight from the Torah,

in which it is written that in order

for the Ark of the Covenant to be moved,

it had to be covered with the skin from an animal

called a Tahash, and the Torah tradition says

that this was an animal with a single horn

growing out of its forehead.

It is written that Moses was given the secret

of where the Tahash could be found

so that he could acquire their skins to cover the Ark.

But even more interesting is the fact that the Ark

sometimes seemed to have a mind of its own

and did not always function in the favor

of those who wielded it.

NARRATOR: According to the book of Samuel,

when the Israelites went to battle

with the mighty Philistine army

around 1100 BC, they brought out the Ark of the Covenant

to aid them once again.

But God had not

given them instructions to do so.

Angered by their presumption that they could use the Ark

as a weapon without his orders,

he awarded victory to the Philistines,

who captured it as a trophy.

The Bible records very strange things

then started to happen.

Death, sickness broke out

amongst the Philistines.

Now, in ancient times,

they had no understanding of energy

or what we would maybe consider something similar

to a radioactive sickness.

They considered this to be displeasure of the god.

They placed the Ark next to a statue

of one of their gods, Dagon.

And they leave, and when they come back,

they see that Dagon's head has been decapitated

and his hands have been taken off.

So they say, "We got to get rid of this thing."

DOWNING: And so they loaded

the Ark of The Covenant on a cart

and sent it off in the direction of an Israeli village

called Beth Shemesh.

But, of course, everyone ran up to look at the Ark.

And as a result, the Bible says, 70 men died

when they looked at the Ark.

For those who have been fans

of Raiders of the Lost Ark

and remember the last scene when Indy is shouting,

"Don't look, don't look, don't look!"...

...that's where that story comes from.

NARRATOR: The Old Testament contains

numerous other examples of the Ark's devastating powers

and ultimately depicts it as a deadly device

capable of striking down anyone

who does not follow God's rules.

BAR TZADOK: When Aaron-- who was the high priest--

his two sons approached, to give an offering...

it stated that, literally, two beams of fire

came forth from the Ark and went up their nostrils

and burnt them from the inside,

leaving their entire outsides intact.

NARRATOR: Beams of fire...

burning people from inside?

Why would an instrument of God

contain such deadly powers?

If the Ark of the Covenant was truly divine,

why would it strike down

two people who were simply trying to make an offering?

TSOUKALOS: Wherever it showed up,

people would, all of a sudden, die.

In my opinion, it was a storage container

that housed some type of a nuclear device.

And having a nuclear device in the hands of

a technologically primitive society

would result in people dying left and right.

Naturally, people would refer to that

as the wrath of God,

when, in reality,

it's nothing else but the wrath of atomic power.

NARRATOR: Is it possible,

as ancient astronaut theorists suggest,

that the Ark of the Covenant

actually contained a nuclear device--

one that was brought to Earth not by God,

but by visitors from another planet?

MARTELL: It's possible that the Ark of the Covenant was

was some type of super weapon

that was being controlled or guided from an extraterrestrial.

NARRATOR: Was the Ark of the Covenant

actually a sophisticated, high-tech device

that was so advanced

that the ancient Israelites were unable to control it?

Perhaps.

But of all the Ark's alleged powers,

there was one that was the most incredible:

its ability to communicate directly with God.

NARRATOR: Petra, Jordan.

At the summit of Jebel Haroun,

a small white dome marks the tomb of Aaron,

the brother of Moses.

According to the Hebrew Bible,

Aaron was chosen by God

to be the first high priest of the Israelites,

a title that came with enormous responsibility.

RABBI ED FEINSTEIN: Aaron, Moses's brother,

served as priest of the people.

And then, following Aaron,

the line of the priests followed his genealogy.

They were the ones designated to carry the Ark,

and they were the ones permitted

to come close to it in worship.

CARTER: The attire of the priests was beautiful,

but it was also there for their protection.

They had to wear a miter. They wore a breastplate.

They had to wear a long robe.

They had to keep certain areas of the body protected:

the head, the lungs, the heart, the genital area.

NARRATOR: The space between the angels on the lid of the Ark

was known as the mercy seat,

upon which the image of God would allegedly sit

when communicating with a Levite priest.

But did the Israelites really witness

an otherworldly presence between the two angels?

And if so, was it literally the image of God

or something else?

Based on the numerous accounts of the Ark's awesome power,

some ancient astronaut theorists have proposed

that it may have been an electrical capacitor,

a device used for storing and transmitting energy.

Some of the stories that have come out of history

about the Ark of the Covenant--

that it erupted in sparks and flames

and people would touch it and die instantly,

or that it leveled cities--

and many people have theorized that this is some type

of actual large energy capacitor.

"Capacitor" is exactly the right word to use.

It relies on static electricity.

It's the simplest device.

You just need two conductors with an insulator between them.

You've got the outer gold, a very nice conductor,

and then, if you open this up and look to the inside,

you'll see a second electrode.

So what that's gonna look like, okay,

you have the outer side of your ark.

That's gonna, say, charge positive.

Then you have your inner wall of the ark coated in gold.

And then you have an insulator in between.

That's just the wood you make the ark out of.

Now, what you got to do is get negative charges

here on the inner side.

And the question is, how do I get my positive

and negative charges onto my ark?

This is where the cherubs come in.

You have one sitting on top here.

That's attached to the outer side.

And you can put charge on it and get your positive charge.

The other cherub is gonna be sitting here.

It won't be connected to the outer layer,

but it'll come in from a rod and connect to the inner side.

And this is where we'll put our negative charge.

So what that looks like, over here at the ark,

is this cherub

will not actually be attached to the outer conductor.

There will be an insulator there,

and then it can have a rod that goes through

and attaches to the inner conductor.

Now, the Israelites claimed to have actually been able to see

the presence of God between the two cherubs,

a representation of God.

Now, if they weren't actually seeing a representation of God,

could this arc of energy have been

some type of other energy device that they were seeing?

So, when we're thinking about the Israelites seeing

the image of God between the two cherub wings,

one of the things to keep in mind, I think,

is how the image of God was often described.

We have smoke, fire...

there's very rarely an actual, like,

visual picture of a person.

And so, if you picture what arcs of electricity will be doing,

there will probably be a little bit of smoke,

um, there will be the really bright light,

there'll be a crackling noise.

That could certainly be something that would be

interpreted as an image of God.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that accounts of God's presence

atop the Ark were actually describing electrical discharge?

And if so, might someone or something

have been sending electrical signals

through the Ark of the Covenant

to communicate with the Israelites?

Ancient astronaut theorists believe such a notion

is not only possible, but all the more plausible,

given the biblical descriptions of a device

known as the breastplate of judgment.

According to the book of Exodus,

it was worn by the priests when entering the Tabernacle

and was adorned with 12 sacred gemstones

called the stones of fire,

which represented the 12 tribes of Israel.

And according to detailed accounts

from sacred texts known as the Talmud,

these gemstones played an important role

when communicating with God through the Ark.

Somehow there would be a pulsating sound

emanating from on top of the cherubim.

And these pulsating, high-pitched sounds

would cause vibration in the stones on his breastplate.

The stones would actually start to light up.

It was like some extraterrestrial Morse code

that was being received from the Ark of the Covenant.

NARRATOR: Jerusalem, 995 BC.

Nearly a century after the Philistines

returned the Ark to Judah,

King David transports it to the capital city

with plans to build an enormous temple in order to house it.

FEINSTEIN: It's Solomon, David's son,

who built the Temple of Jerusalem

and installed the Ark in the inner sanctum,

the Holy of Holies.

NARRATOR: Once installed in the temple in 955 BC,

the mysterious Ark continued to serve the Israelites

for another three and a half centuries...

until, suddenly...

it vanishes from history.

FEINSTEIN: The book of Kings

describes the destruction of the city of Jerusalem;

says nothing about the Ark.

It disappears from the literary history in the same way

that it disappeared from material history.

NARRATOR: But what happened to it?

Was it stolen?

Destroyed?

Or was it deliberately hidden?

There are those who believe they know the answer,

and that not only does the Ark still exist

but they are confident it will return.

When I read what the Bible says about the high priest

communicating with God through the Ark,

wearing a breastplate with gemstones that lit up,

it's hard not to envision this as a technological device.

But the description doesn't end there.

The high priest would also inhale a secret mixture

of incense, which would open up synapses in the brain.

But why should contact with the divine require a wooden box,

a breastplate that lights up,

and the burning of special incense?

That is what we're about to find out.

NARRATOR: Mount Tsurugi, Japan.

Every year, Shinto worshippers ascend this mountain,

6,000 miles from the Jewish Holy Land.

They carry an elaborate gold-clad chest that,

like the Ark of the Covenant,

is believed to contain the spirit of God.

Scholars in Japan look at, uh, the Old Testament...

they also look at the kind of mythical foundational texts

of Japan like the Kojiki

and see certain similarities.

And they like to think that these similarities

are not just coincidences

but actually suggest ancient connections.

Part of this theory is that these lost tribes of Israel

brought the Ark to Japan,

and it ended up at a sacred peak, Mount Tsurugi,

and it lays hidden

in the limestone caves underneath it.

NARRATOR: Could the Ark of the Covenant

really be hidden in Japan?

And might this explain why Shinto worshippers

perform a ritual that's eerily reminiscent

of the ancient Israelites carrying the Ark

through the desert?

One Japanese historian named Takane Masanori

was so confident that the Ark of the Covenant

was hidden in Mount Tsurugi,

he actually performed excavations of the mountain

in the 1930s.

JONATHAN YOUNG: Excavations were started in 1936

on the peak or near the peak of Mount Tsurugi,

and this research went on for some decades.

And then it was all shut down,

and the area is now a national park,

so further research is banned for environmental reasons,

so we won't know.

The Ark of the Covenant has not been found in Japan,

but the legend continues.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that a lost tribe of Israel

made their way thousands of miles across the Asian continent

and brought the Ark to Japan?

It is just one theory out of many.

Some biblical scholars suggest

that Israel's high priests,

anticipating the destruction of the city,

stashed the Ark deep in a cave

under Jerusalem's Temple Mount, for protection.

It is also believed that, centuries later,

the Ark was discovered in its hiding place

and was taken away to safety

by a group known as the Knights Templar.

McGOWAN: There are certainly legends throughout Europe

and specifically France

of where the Ark of the Covenant ended up.

Some say it was buried beneath Chartres Cathedral in the crypt.

Some say it was buried in the Languedoc region

near Rennes-le-Château.

And we know that the Nazis excavated in depth

in these mountains looking for the Ark of the Covenant.

NARRATOR: But some believe the Ark's journey didn't end

in France, and that, eventually,

it was taken even further to the north.

MIKE BARA: There's been a rumor, for years,

that the Templar treasure was actually taken

through France by the Templars.

And the story goes that it was then taken to Rosslyn Chapel

in Scotland, for safekeeping.

NARRATOR: Could the Ark of the Covenant still be hidden

somewhere in Rosslyn Chapel?

Or might it have been,

as some ancient astronaut theorists suggest,

taken far away, to North America...

where it was hidden deep underground

and still lies buried?

Perhaps.

But there are those who believe

that the Ark isn't hidden at all.

They claim its whereabouts have been well-known,

and well-guarded, for hundreds of years.

Aksum, Ethiopia.

The Church of St. Mary of Zion.

A solitary monk, who is not allowed to leave the grounds,

is charged with guarding the church's holiest relic.

It is a job he has devoted his life to

and one he will keep until his death.

HANCOCK: There's a cathedral there

called the Cathedral of St. Mary of Zion.

And I started talking to the monk who guarded the chapel.

And-and he told me

that lying in that chapel was the true,

the original, Ark of the Covenant.

Now, at first it seemed to me like an incredibly tall story.

But as I began to look into it,

I realized that there was something

to the Ethiopian claim.

For example, why was there

an ancient Jewish population in Ethiopia?

It was like they were frozen in amber from an earlier time

and-and-and caught in Ethiopia.

And I got to know a succession

of three different guardians of the Ark.

Once appointed as guardian, they have a very short life span.

They die very quickly.

And one of them, in particular,

pointed the issue of his eyes to me,

and the way that the cataracts were creeping over his eyes.

And I said, "What is causing that?"

And he said, "It's the Ark of the Covenant

that's causing that."

He said, "The Ark is a thing of fire."

And there was such truth and power in his words

that I began to feel very strongly that

the Ethiopians could indeed have this object.

NARRATOR: Could the Ark of the Covenant really reside

in a church in Ethiopia,

in a location so publicly known and so modestly protected?

If so, why has there been no proof?

Is it an elaborate hoax?

Or is there perhaps another reason?

And could that reason be based

on one of the other audacious theories concerning the Ark,

that there are more than one of them?

BAR TZADOK: The Torah speaks that

there are actually two arks.

There was one ark, which was built by Moses

when he first came down from Mount Sinai.

And only later do we find in the book of Exodus

was the commandment given for a ark to be built by Bezalel.

That was the ark that stayed in the Tabernacle.

NARRATOR: If the Ark really was a technological device,

as ancient astronaut theorists believe,

might there really have been more than one of them?

And if so, might the various myths and legends about the Ark

and its whereabouts all be plausible?

Perhaps.

But whether there is one ark or many,

two other important questions remain:

what was the Ark's true purpose?

And what would happen if it ever returned?

NARRATOR: The Dome of the Rock.

Jerusalem.

This Islamic shrine sits atop the Temple Mount,

once the site of King Solomon's Temple,

and the last known location of the Ark of the Covenant.

In 1981,

a small team of Israeli workmen

secretly tunneled under this hotly disputed site.

Rabbi Yehuda Getz,

the preeminent Rabbi of the Western Wall,

supervised the highly prohibited

and politically inflammatory excavation.

There was a pretty big problem with this,

because that is the number one

sacred site for the Muslims as well,

and these men believed strongly enough

that the Ark of the Covenant had been located there,

that they were willing to take such great risks to try

to locate the Ark of the Covenant themselves.

NARRATOR: When Arabs on the Mount

heard noises from the cistern below,

they confronted the work crew

in what became a dramatic subterranean standoff.

Police separated the two sides

and ordered the tunnel to be resealed.

To his dying day,

Rabbi Getz believed he was just 40 feet away

from finding the original Ark of the Covenant.

But could such an audacious claim be true?

Might the Ark really still be located

where it was thousands of years ago,

at the site of the Jews' most sacred temple,

one of the holiest places on Earth?

BAR TZADOK: There's a very interesting prophecy

in the book of Zechariah that states

that there's gonna be a tremendous earthquake

in Jerusalem.

The Mount of Olives is to split.

It is said that this earthquake

is to be caused by some type of a sonic vibration

created from under the earth

and that the powers from under the earth

are then gonna arise out of this chasm with the Ark.

This is then considered to be, A: the return of the Ark,

and B: the famous, of course, coming of the Messiah.

HENRY: All three of the big three religions

have prophecies about the end-time arrival

of a messianic figure.

And what we're told is that angels

will help bring the Ark of the Covenant back to Earth.

NARRATOR: Could the lights seen over the Temple Mount indicate

that some sort of extraterrestrial reactivation

of the Ark was taking place?

And if so, might we be close

to finally rediscovering this ancient relic

and finding the source of its incredible power?

TSOUKALOS: If that device were ever to be found,

then that will forever change the course of human history,

because, if we look at our past,

it already has changed the course of human history.

BARA: If the Ark could be found

and if it could be retrieved,

the possibility exists that its technology could be understood

and exploited and possibly even used

to reconnect with whoever created it.

If they were, in fact, extraterrestrial beings,

then the reality is we might have a direct phone line

to the E.T.s.

We, as a culture, as a species,

we seem to use most of our technology for war.

And so it would be like giving a three-year-old a loaded gun.

We can barely deal with the technology that we have now,

so maybe it's good that, for now, it's hidden.

TSOUKALOS: Does the Ark of the Covenant still reside

at the Temple Mount?

Or does it lie elsewhere,

perhaps halfway around the world,

safely hidden so that mankind will not abuse it?

One thing is certain:

when the Ark of the Covenant is finally found,

the ancient astronaut theory will no longer be just a theory.

It will be a fact.

And mankind will discover that,

in addition to the existence of an Almighty God,

its history has also been influenced

by a very different form of extraterrestrial visitation,

one that seeks to guide us forward

until the day comes when we finally make contact.