PELEH by John Ackerman

by JF

This is the third in a series of related books by this author, and if this book is any reflection, his work as a whole must surely be some of the most difficult books to review. The reason for this is the author’s illimitable chosen subject matter: John Ackerman seeks to prove nothing less than the following: A) the erroneousness of atheistic uniformitarianism; B) the veracity of the King James Bible; C) the veracity of many accounts in ancient pagan literature such as the Hindu Vedas and early Greek historical and/or mythical accounts. Ackerman’s entire system of proposals builds on the work of Emmanuel Velikovsky in its method of interpreting ancient historical/mythical accounts and then combining those accounts with what we know about astronomy and what we can speculate about astronomy.

Ackerman’s hypotheses, if true, overthrow modern man’s understanding of our galaxy, our understanding of the origin of the planets, etc., etc. Ackerman theorizes that the planets Mars and Venus once had orbital patterns that brought them into closer proximity to the Earth than we find nowadays, and these ancient planetary ”close encounters” caused collossal catastrophes to occur on Earth, but also eventually caused Earth to be rejuvenated in a few ways that would be critical to life forms on Earth.

At times Ackerman’s conjectures seem very compelling indeed; at other times Ackerman seems like he’s stretching the importance of his evidence in order to fit his hypotheses. For this reader, Ackerman’s most persuasive evidence was his use of the geographical evidence of the Earth itself (Example: Ackerman’s explanation for the construction of the Egyptian pyramids makes more sense than anything else ever put forward by anyone calling himself an archaeologist; also, Ackerman’s explanation of the formation of the Saharan, Arabian, and Gobi Deserts is uncannily compelling.) And although this reader appreciated the author’s earnest attempt at fidelity to Scripture, it just does not feel like a strong area of argument for him when he cites Scripture to back up his claims (Example: Necessitating that the “firmament of the heaven” in Genesis is a reference to the ancient “priori-Mars” is pure, unalloyed speculation and nothing more than that).

It is, however, stimulating and, in our materialistic day, most novel, to find a man of science who seeks to remain faithful to the True Word of God while at the same time overthrowing all other mainstream thought constructs of the day as any good iconoclast should. And it is fascinating to note that, if even a majority of Ackerman’s vast claims are accurate, then it accounts for and utterly refutes basically all of the world’s false religions, for it explains that the “gods” which ancient people were worshipping were actually the result of terrifyingly close planetary encounters.

Ultimately, the reason why Ackerman’s work is so hard to review is that, in this, our present fleshly existence on this Earth, it is virtually inconceivable how we should ever prove whether Ackerman’s brobdingnagian speculations are accurate or not. Truly we shall have to wait for Our Lord’s return to find out if Ackerman was a rare God-fearing genius or just some kind of well-intentioned crackpot. Truly also is this work of such a mindboggling and arcane nature that it deserves the adjective “brobdingnagian.”

(Addendum: This reader would be remiss if he did not point out that this work contains two glaring ironies: Here this author has the temerity and, yes, the vision to challenge just about every “scientific” orthodoxy within the fields of modern astronomy and archaeology, but he nevertheless out-of-hand, and quite incongruously, accepts the official claims of N.A.S.A. that the Apollo astronauts actually went to the moon, and he moreover inexplicably seems to be totally unaware of the work of a growing number of legitimate [though maverick, like Ackerman himself] men of science like Dr. Donald DeYoung, Dr. Kent Hovind, Dr. Barry Setterfield, Dr. Robert Gentry, etc., etc., who have called into serious question any and all present methods of dating rocks and fossils. Apparently, visionary iconoclasts are human too, subject to the same withering, distorting effects of propaganda upon truth wherever they are not constantly vigilant against allowing assumptions to creep into their belief systems.)

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