These were themes that were "in the air" but were not generally voiced consciously until Heston's invocations of human equality, justice under God's law and an affirmation that all human freedoms are based on divine law.

The deeper message in all his films is that "Right makes Might" and not the other way around. As was done by De Mille in "The Ten Commandments," in "Ben Hur," once again, the Judeo-Christian identity bridge was mortared and cemented by William Wyler and Charlton Heston, when as a devout Jew, Judah Ben Hur, embraces Christ for a moment in trying to help the Shepard-Carpenter on the Via Dolarosa, going to Golgotha.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Heston appeared on a series of film, which served to warn the western world of many perils and dangers yet to come.

In Samuel Bronston's "El Cid," Heston's performance warned the world of the peril posed by Muslim Fundamentalism as he battled the Muslim fanatic, Ben Youssif, for control of medieval Spain. In the climax of Part I, Ruy Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar (dubbed "El Cid," from the Arabic "el Sayyid," meaning "The Lord") battles in single combat to win "the walled-city" of Calahorra for the King of Castile and Arragon.

After vanquishing his foe, Don Martin, another Spanish champion, in the greatest jousting match ever filmed, El Cid intoned:

Metaphorically, in 1961, El Cid might have, just as well, been asking:

"El Cid" today remains as timely, as pertinent and relevant to world affairs as it did on opening day in 1961 as we face the age old battle with Islamo-Fascism once again.

In another epic of that era, Heston portrayed an American soldier, Major Matt Lewis, holding out with his contingent of Yankees in the American legation, fighting against hordes of rabid Chinese kung-fu warriors during "The Boxer Rebellion" in "55 Days at Peking."

This 1963 film came at the height of the Cold War and at the time of the schism between the Soviet Union and Red China, which culminated later with a shooting border war across the Amur River. This was a time when both the Russians and the United States stood on guard and in dread of "The Yellow Peril" then become the Red Peril with the blood of millions on the hands of Mao Tse-tung. No human being in history has killed more people than did Mao Tse-tung, who slew 80 million of his own people and was quite willing to sacrifice 300 million more to gain world domination.

Fortunately for the world, Russian Premier Nikita Khruschev stopped Mao's plan to lure the United States into an atomic war, which led in turn to the schism in "World Socialism."

In his later years, Heston became an accomplished author of several books. "55 Days at Peking" may have sparked his interest in Chinese affairs, culminating in his tour of China and a journal, published in 1990, called:

"Beijing Diary: The personal story of a remarkable theatrical and political event- the production of an all-Chinese version of 'The Caine Mutiny Court-martial' in Bejing."

In the 1966 Cinerama spectacle, "Khartoum," Charlton Heston (portraying the British field marshall, General Charles 'Chinese' Gordon) perishes, fighting the fanatical, whirling dervish forces of "The Mahdi," a term rarely heard in those days but one invoked regularly today by Mamoud Ahmadinejad, the current President of Iran, as he calls for the destruction of western civilization and worldwide institution of "Sha'aria Law.

In 1968, Heston (once again) took the world by storm with his performance as George Taylor, the lone survivor of an American interplanetary space mission in "The Planet of the Apes." The message to mankind was clear: change your ways or you will devolve into something less than human, lower than animals, who will lead humanity to self-destruction. Who can forget the stunning climax (?) with Lady Liberty on the beach or the audiences' reaction earlier in the film when he screams at his simian captors?

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