Thanks to my friend Bill Federer and another excellent post in American Minute. Why does the world seek false prophecies and doctrine? Remember YK-2000, Heavens Gate, and Jim Jones?
History is littered with the dead bones of mankind trying to use "Mankind" to determine his future. Why doesn't he believe the word of God? None have come to past except the word of God. His word has 6000 years do God keeping his words and honoring His prophesies.
What does the bible say about the coming end of the world?
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The Mayan civilization peaked around 900 AD, then declined due to drought and internal disruptions.
Centuries later, the Aztecs grew to control 200,000 square miles and rule 6 million people.
But then, in 1519, just two years after Martin Luther began the Reformation in Germany, Hernan Cortés arrived in Central America with the mixed motives of "God, Glory and Gold."
Before embarking for Mexico, Cortés told his 500 men, February 10, 1519:
"Soldiers of Spain...We seek not only to subdue boundless territory in the name of our Emperor Don Carlos, but to win millions of unsalvaged souls to the True Faith."
Cortés ordered his ships sunk in the harbor and marched inland.
Many tribes were anxious to break away from Aztec rule because, among other reasons, they were required to provide youth for sacrifices.
Cortés went from town to town, freeing captives, rolling idols down temple steps and erecting crosses.
After defeating the Aztec allied Tabascan tribe, Cortés preached through interpreter Gerónimo de Aguilar, as reported by Francisco Lopez de Gomara:
"Cortés told them of their blindness and great vanity in worshiping many gods and making sacrifices of human blood to them...
He then told them of a single God, Creator of Heaven and earth and men, whom the Christians worshiped and served, and whom all men should worship and serve.
In short, after he had explained...how the Son of God had suffered on the Cross, they accepted it and broke up their idols."
When ambassadors from Montezuma arrived bearing gifts, Cortés told them, as recorded by Bernal Diaz del Castillo:
"When Tendile and Pitalpitoque saw us thus kneeling, as they were very intelligent, they asked what was the reason that we humbled ourselves before a tree cut in that particular way...
Cortés...delivered a discourse to the Caciques so fitting...that no good theologian could have bettered it...
He told them that their idols were not good but evil things which would take flight at the presence of the sign of the cross, for on a similar cross the Lord of Heaven and earth and all created things suffered passion and death...our true God, Jesus Christ, who had been willing to suffer and die in order to save the whole human race;
that the third day He rose again and is now in heaven; and that by Him we shall all be judged...
Cortés also told them that one of the objects for which our great Emperor had sent us to their country was to abolish human sacrifices."
Upon reaching Tenochitlan (Mexico City), Montezuma asked Cortés if he was the god Quetzalcoatl, who was predicted to return from the east as a white man with a beard and blue eyes, to stamp out human sacrifice.
Montezuma was disturbed because of ominous portents that had recently occurred interpreted as foretelling Quetzalcoatl's return, namely:
water of the lake around Mexico City boiling over due to volcanic eruption, unusual northern lights, comets, earthquakes, the temple of the sun god catching fire, an eerie wailing noise at night, and the king's sister revived from her grave saying strange beings would enter the country and ruin it.
Montezuma showed Cortés and his men temples and a theater made of human skulls, wherein Gonzalo de Umbria counted 136,000 skulls. Bernal Diaz del Castillo recorded:
"Our Captain said to Montezuma through our interpreter, half laughing: 'Señor Montezuma, I do not understand how such a great Prince and wise man as you are has not come to the conclusion, in your mind, that these idols of yours are not gods, but evil things that are called devils."
When he received news of another Spanish expedition sailing for Mexico, Cortés left for the coast, leaving his men in Montezuma's palace.
When a crowd of pagan priests were loudly performing a ceremony, the men Cortés had left panicked and fired a cannon, killing many and creating an uproar.
Cortés hurried back and asked Montezuma to quell the riot. The people were indignant and pelted Montezuma with rocks, mortally wounding him.
Bernal Diaz del Castillo recalled:
"Cortés wept for him, and all of us Captains and soldiers, and there was no man among us who knew him...who did not bemoan him as though he were our father."
Cortés fought his way out of the city with great loss to his ranks, and fled back to the coast.
In his absence, the city was decimated by smallpox, a disease thought to have been carried by an African slave Francisico de Baguia, who passed it to one of Cortes' soldiers that was killed in Mexico City.
During the winter of 1520, smallpox killed half of the Aztec population.
Mounting his final attack on Mexico City, Cortés captured the last Aztec ruler, Cuauhtémoc, and then personally ruled Mexico till 1524.
He traveled back and forth to Spain, and even joined a fleet in 1541, commanded by Andrea Doria, to fight the infamous Muslim Turkish Barbary pirate Barbarossa of Algiers.
Cortés died in Mexico on DECEMBER 2, 1547.
Driven by the mixed motives of "God, Glory and Gold," Cortés had inscribed on his coat of arms the Latin phrase: "The judgment of the Lord overtook them; His might strengthened my arm."
