Decades ago I did a cursory and superficial examination of the ancient Maya. I then forgot them until the past few months. I was spurred on to a reexamination by a young man in Mexico City named Luis Conde. Not until I dove into the recent publications on the Maya did I realize the significance of their ancient work. Tremendous work has been done over the intervening forty years. We not only have made many new discoveries, we have learned mostly how to read their strange glyphs.

The heart of the concern to Luis was the filling of the Long Count after 5,000 years, at the end of 2012. And then oddly, at the winter solstice.

But first to other matters.

I learned that the Maya:

• Remembered a super-human personality who started them on the road to higher cultural developments: Kukulcan (Quetzalcoatl).
• As a primitive stone-age people had learned to read and write. The Maya are noted for the only known, fully developed, written language of the pre-Columbian Americas. This means they were the only New World civilization that could write everything they could say. No other culture in the New World developed such a system.
• Had the most sophisticated calendar in the world, superior to any other known, from any other culture.
• Until destroyed by the Spanish in the 16th century, maintained public records that remembered, although highly distorted, very ancient ages of our planet.
• Were deeply religious, even though clinging to primitive social habits of human sacrifice. Their world-view recognized and related to a retinue of celestial personalities, coupled with an understanding of spiritual forces in creation. Unfortunately, we in the western world identified that phenomenon as pagan idolatry. Only with the publication of such works as Maya Cosmos are we beginning to come to grips with the religious depth of that ancient civilization.
• Believed in, and preserved, prophecies about our world. These were not the ravings of ecstatic personalities induced by neurotic or psychological states, but true prophecy, describing the destiny of our world. They truly believed in divine destiny.

I used the following:

• Popul Vuh, Translation and Commentary: Sacred Book of the Quiché Maya People by Allen J. Christenson, 2007 (PVC). See also Popul Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life: with commentary based on the ancient knowledge of the modern Quiche Maya, translated by Dennis Tedlock, 1986 (PVT).
• The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, by Ralph L. Roys, Carnegie Institution, Washington D.C., 1933.
• The Codex Piro and the Book of Chilam Balam of Mani, Translated and Edited by Eugene R. Craine and Reginald C. Reindorp, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1979.
• The Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin, Munro S. Edmonson, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1982.
• Various books by Linda Schele and collaborators.
• Before Columbus, Cyrus Gordon, Crown Publishers, New York, 1971.
• Numerous other sources.

In the following I offer URLs for readers who may be unfamiliar with finding Internet resources.

An estimate of the wealth of information available to show the cultural and religious knowledge of the ancient Maya can be obtained by some statements from the Popul Vuh. As I read through the texts I realized the difficulties in translation, and the ease with which the images invoked by the original writers could be confused, especially if we come to the texts with preconceived notions. One such notion is that primitive societies developed through purely evolutionary forces and were untouched by higher outside influences. Hence their religious expression could only be pagan idolatry. Refer to the following Internet sources from Allen J. Christenson and Dennis Tedlock.

http://www.mesoweb.com/publications/Christenson/PopolVuh.pdf

http://www.tphta.ws/TPH_POPL.HTM

• New World Physical Age
• Christenson pg 213: This therefore is the dawn, the appearance of the sun, moon, and stars. pg 216: There it was that the sun, moon, and stars truly appeared. Everything on the face of the earth and beneath the sky had its dawn and became clear. Christenson, note 599, states that Throughout Mesoamerica the first dawn of the sun is a symbol, not only for the birth of a new age . . .
• Tedlock, pg 36: THIS WAS WHEN THERE WAS JUST A TRACE OF EARLY DAWN on the face of the earth, there was no sun. But there was one who magnified himself; Seven Macaw is his name. The sky-earth was already there, but the face of the sun-moon was clouded over. Even so, it is said that his light provided a sign for the people who were flooded. He was like a person of genius in his being.
• Seven Macaw would have been a superhuman personality who worked with the earth tribes.
• The mechanism by which these mysterious remarks can be explained is really quite simple. Scientific evidence shows that the planet went through a great physical change, from a cloud cover over the entire earth, to the atmospheric condition we know today. Prior to this event the sun, moon, and stars could not be seen from the surface of the planet. This event caused the "dawn" of a new physical age. The sun, moon, and stars truly appeared. When this happened the entire earth was flooded, not flooded in the sense of Noah's story, where the entire earth was covered with water, but in the sense that the entire planet saw a great deluge. The moisture contained in the atmosphere suddenly became unstable and poured down as tremendous rain. The ancient Sumerians not only recorded this event, but placed a date on it, some 30,000 years ago.
• See http://www.world-destiny.org/a26kl.htm and http://www.world-destiny.org/a28dat.htm

• Method of Designating Origins
• Christenson pg 242: We go to the East from where our fathers came . . . These, then, were the names of the three who went across the sea.
• Tedlock pg 83: We haven't written their names, but they multiplied there, from out of the east. There came to be many peoples in the blackness; they began to abound even before the birth of the sun and the light. When they began to abound they were all there together; they stood and walked in crowds, there in the east.
• Clearly, the East is a generic term, not a geographical direction. It denotes some location that is foreign, or perhaps celestial, outside the familiar geographical confines of the Mayan culture.

Statements from The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, as translated by Ralph Roys, show the nature of their prophecies:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/maya/cbc/index.htm

This prophecy tells us plainly that when the end comes we shall not understand. This is the end of the katun (count), the end of the Long Count. This is the rolling up of the Mat of the katun, the Mat of the Day Count. The term Mat here implies the weave of time, the tapestry that has unfolded for thousands of year. Now that tapestry shall be rolled up.

The end of the age shall not come because of great misery; great misery shall face the nations when the end comes. 

Where does the end come from? From the north. From the west. It shall fall from the sky.

Who will be the priest and the prophet to declare truly the word of the Lord, the book of his prophecies? But will you listen? You shall not listen because you do not understand. The entire world shall not understand. Only a few. But God shall give everyone an opportunity to come to decision.

These phrases are strongly reminiscent of phrases from the Hebrew prophecies. That is the book of the Lord. See Isa 29:6, Jer 51:58 (RSV), Ezek 7:7, 7:10, Rev 18:10, and so on. Of prophets we were told, Jer 1:5, Mal 4:5, and so on.

The theme of a great screening of mankind, of those who believe, and those who do not, the separation of the sheep from the goats, runs throughout the Bible.

But then, afterwards, after all the misery, men shall once again enjoy the bounty of the earth, Jer 31:12.

In the Bible we are told that Michael shall rise at the time of the end, Dan 12:1. But Michael is Jesus. (This fact is unknown to virtually all Christians, and only recently has it been revealed to us. See the Urantia Papers, the Urantia Foundation, Chicago, 1955.) Hence we may refer to him as Michael Jesus. He is the Creator. Our Creator lived on earth as a man. Because he lived among us many Christians regard Jesus, the Creator, as their elder brother.

Itzamna Kauil is the Maya Creator. He shall rise just as Michael Jesus shall rise. He lived as a man, as Kauil, just as Jesus lived as a man. He now comes, not as man, Kauil or Jesus, but as God, Itzamna or Michael. Itzamna Kauil is the Lord; Michael Jesus is the Lord. Itzamna Kauil is the Maya elder brother.

When he comes (rises or returns to this earth) the bearded men, two prophets, will also come, bearing the sign of God. While we may say that later Maya writers mixed Christian and Mayan images in this passage, they could not have mixed concepts that are unknown among Jews and Christians to this day. The Maya understood that when these bearded men would come this would be the word of God coming to the whole world. Then would come the regeneration of men. This would not be the regeneration of the gross populations of the world who refuse to believe, but those few who then would dedicate themselves to their Creator. These bearded men would bring that regeneration. Those people who sincerely believe in Itzamna-Kauil, Michael-Jesus, those who receive him in their hearts and in their minds, will go to heaven to be with him there.

The two-day men are all those political leaders who come and go so quickly.

Expansion of these prophecies requires extensive discussion, not permissible here.

Please understand that I do not know the Mayan dialects, nor do I know Spanish, and must rely on English translations. Everything that I offer here is conditioned by this limitation.

As I work on and complete this series of papers I shall send you the URLs.

Ernest