Eyewitness Testimony About Ark of the Covenant Video

This may be an appropriate time to mention publicly that I and several other Christians have watched with our own eyes a video which Ron shot inside the cave before the furniture was re-arranged. The crack in the roof was clearly visible with the Blood still on it; the table was there in close-up, and many piles of skins. The Ark was there, but was covered by a brilliant white light which hid it from the camera as Ron panned around the cave.

To the best of my knowledge there is only one copy of it in existence, Ron’s original, and it’s not in America now. It’s in a safe place of the Lord’s own choosing to which I once took A. S., who has met the keeper but has not viewed the tape. I have twice asked the Lord if I should go and get the tape for the purpose of making copies or DVDs (it’s not in my personal keeping) and each time I was given the same answer from the Lord’s own mouth. “The tape stays where it is.”

I was an eye-witness of Ron’s tape of the inside of the cave. I wasn’t with him when he shot it, but I saw the tape not very long afterwards.   I have never had any instruction from the Lord to keep silent about it in general. Indeed, Ron himself was keen that the tape should be seen widely.

Events turned out otherwise however, and the last order I had from the Lord was not to remove it from its present safe location. That obviously precludes public discussion of where it is.   But for what it’s worth I’m happy to answer any questions I can about the tape, and what I saw on it. I last viewed it some years ago and my visual memory is not great (I’m far better with words). However by the same token my visual imagination is pretty bad too, which is probably a good thing for this purpose.

My sole purpose in mentioning it here was to help strengthen the faith of some here whose confidence in Ron’s word may have been shaken by doubts.

> 1. How long is the video tape?

The section shot inside the cave was part of a longer tape, most of which contained other less dramatic stuff. I’d say there were several minutes’ of material shot inside the cave.

> 2. What quality is it? Shaky? Steady? On a tripod? In color?

Steady and in colour. From what I can recall I’d say it was almost certainly shot using a tripod and a single camera light, which Ron moved about in between shots from one part of the cave to another so as to get pictures of the contents from different angles.

> What type of lighting used? Good quality or poor? Grainy footage or clear?

Single light fixed to the camera. As Ron panned round the cave the light moved with the camera; off-centre the edges of the frame were quite dark. The tape was free from grain, but the colour balance was not great. I suppose it was NTSC (which in the days when I was a videotape engineer we used to say stood for ‘Never The Same Colour twice’). 

> 3. Did you see any angels on the tape?

> 4. Was there a time stamp on the tape itself that was displayed on the screen?

Not that I recall, there wasn’t.

> 5. How long ago did you see it?

Pass. That information might assist those who want to find the tape.

> 6. Have you ever talked to Ron about the tape? If so what did he say?

I never talked to him specifically about the tape. I did ask him questions about the Ark, about the tables of stone, and about the book of the law. I assumed at the time that everybody who knew anything of Ron’s work had seen this tape along with all his other material. It was only when Bill Fry intercepted a post of mine to this list that I realised that this was not so. Even Bill hadn’t seen it.

> 7. The person(s) who have the tape are they waiting for the right time to release it? Did Ron give it to him/her/them or what’s the reason for them holding it back?

Same answer as that to question 5 I’m afraid. Sorry.

> 8. From your perspective is this the tape where Ron took out the tables of stone? Was this before or after that event if it’s not the same footage.

No. It’s an earlier tape. Neither Ron nor the tables appeared on the tape I saw.

> 9. How many people were with you when you viewed it and where did this occur? Australia?

Only one person viewed it simultaneously with me, but several others had seen it just a few days previously. One has since gone to be with the Lord, but the others are still alive. The country name is under wraps, as per Q5.

> 10. Does Ron say anything on the tape? If so what does he say?

No. Ron was the cameraman, but he didn’t appear in front of the camera, and I don’t recall his giving any verbal commentary on the sequence inside the cave.

> 11. What does the Table of Showbread look like?

To be honest it looked dark bronze, but I suppose that was the effect of the camera light which probably had a predominantly blue spectrum. The table was rectangular and had a raised decorative border a few inches high running all around the top, with what I took to be cast pomegranates at regular intervals. The cave sequence opened with a close-up shot of one corner of the table, showing some fine workmanship in its making.

> 12. Did you see the 7 branch candlestick and if so what did it look like?

No. I was consciously looking for it, but I didn’t see it. (Everybody asks this question! It’s the most popular question after the Ark itself).

> 13. You said you saw the skins piled up in a corner.

They weren’t piled in a corner; they were heaped everywhere, all over the floor and everything else. Lots of them.

> What conditions were they in?

I don’t recall any close-ups of the coverings, but the general impression was one of grey dustiness. They were folded up as you would fold a lot of blankets, and some were obviously covering large objects underneath. The menorah may have been on its side under them.

> 14. Did you see any other object in the cave and if so what were they?

At the time I thought that this tape was going on general release and that I’d be getting a copy sometime, so I didn’t make any mental notes. But I do remember seeing the stone box in which the Ark had been stored, with its lid moved to one side. I have a feeling that Goliath’s sword was there, but I have no particular mental image of it; just that we discussed it between ourselves, and the reason for our discussing it was probably that it was in there. Of course the dominant feature was the Ark itself, and the fact that it was hidden by a brilliant white light. As Ron panned the camera around, a circle of light moved across the field of view until it filled the whole screen, then it moved off again at the other edge.

Ron’s verbal account of this was that the effect was only on the tape; no such light was visible to him inside the cave where he saw the Ark plainly. It was only when he viewed the tape afterwards that he saw that the light had covered the Ark for the purpose of the recording.

The other notable feature was the crack in the roof of the cave with the dark stain of blood on one side of it, about the size of one’s hand I should think. (The roof was not high; a man would probably have had to stoop to avoid hitting his head). Seeing the blood there was the most moving thing to me.

I think if the Lord had wanted somebody to give a detailed account of the tape He would have chosen somebody other than me to see it! My powers of visual observation and retention are famously bad. My principal contribution to this debate is simply that I can testify to having seen that tape, that it showed exactly what Ron said it did, and that I was awed at what I saw. I think we all were.

1. Did the table of showbread have just one shelf (top one) or any below it too?

I only remember seeing the top surface, and not much below it. I think it was perhaps partially covered by skins, but it was quite a while ago and as I mentioned earlier my visual memory is really terrible.

> 2. How close to the ceiling was the ark of the covenant stone case?

Very close. I remember being rather surprised at how low the roof was. I can’t give you any meaningful estimate of the exact distance – I’d have to view the tape again to do that – but my memory is that it was about enough to crawl into and not much more.

> 3. Was the chamber cleared out? Like was Ron shooting the video from the floor of the chamber or was he standing on stones or what? You said he was close to the ceiling any thoughts on how close?

The chamber was certainly not cleared out. In fact apart from things like the lid of the stone box, it looked as though nobody had been in there for centuries. As I suppose they hadn’t. The place looked like a lumber room, with things everywhere all over the floor, and of course all those heaps of skins, so that you would have to clamber over one thing to look at the next. Ron was about my height (6ft) and I reckon I’d have had to stoop in there, but I think the camera was a foot or more so below head height.

> 4. Was the stone case that held the ark in the middle of the chamber or up against one of the sides?

From the opening shot it was on the right hand side at the back, if the camera was central that is. But what with there being so many objects in there, only those in front of the camera being illuminated, and the light in front of the Ark dis-orienting things a bit, I couldn’t swear to it. However my memory is certainly that it wasn’t in the center of the cave; I think it was close to a wall at the back.

> 5. Did you see any openings into the chamber or the shape of the chamber?

No. Because of the limited lighting that wasn’t possible.

> 6. Did it look like Hi-8 video or something older?

Actually it didn’t look too bad, all things considered. It was a difficult situation for an amateur shoot. I was never into amateur video (I worked with B&W 1-inch tape on 12-inch reels) so I couldn’t guess which system it was. The picture quality seemed rather better than some of Ron’s other stuff though, so maybe he had taken particular care to get hold of a good camera.

I guess he certainly could, but ….. amazing as it sounds to us here, he has forgotten the cave sequence completely, as A. S. and I discovered when we called upon him for the express purpose of having a look at it – in A’s case for the first time. Now in the context of our uneventful little lives, that sounds hard to believe; that anybody to whom these things mean so much could actually forget such a unique thing in his possession! This man is a Spirit-filled believer in the Lord, and is deeply appreciative of the significance of these matters. He supported Ron and contributed significantly to Ron’s work, so he isn’t ignorant. But he is a man to whom strange, and sometimes dangerous, things just happen. The same was true of his father, so it runs in the family. I have sometimes said that, if and when World War Three breaks out, it will be six feet away from where this man happens to be standing at that moment; a bit like being the guy who happened to be standing next to Crown Prince Ferdinand when he was shot in 1914. This man has about a dozen of Ron’s tapes, but he has not sat down and catalogued them, and to do so would necessarily take up a fair bit of time. His wife too is the CEO of a multi-million business. I hope I have given you something of the picture. People like this do not sit about in the evenings flicking through the TV channels. They live very full, and sometimes dangerous, lives. But for all that, it would be hard to think of a more suitable man to be keeper of something like this. He is completely fearless; and he is very well aware of what is going on in the world behind the scenes. His friends and contacts are too.

Ian Thain   Thain.com