Seminary Spaceships

If you’ve read A Jolly Good Time at the Cemetery, you’ll recall that my brother Doug and I attended Faith Seminary, near Philadelphia. We were there in the mid-seventies of what we called the Twentieth Century (even though every year that I can recall from that century started with the number nineteen---go figure). At the time, a NASA scientist gained some popularity in Christian circles with a book and lecture series advancing a new take on the amazing visions recounted in Ezekiel 1.

If you’re among the 99.9% of Americans who’ve never read Ezekiel (or among the rest who may have read it but have little or no recollection of it) I will hereby enlighten you. In his first chapter, Ezekiel describes a vision of living creatures appearing out of a whirlwind, each with four wings and four faces (of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle). The creatures “sparkled like the color of burnished bronze,” and they “ran back and forth, in appearance like a flash of lightning.” Then the prophet describes what he calls “a wheel on the earth beside each living creature,” and he says, “The appearance of their workings was, as it were, a wheel in the middle of a wheel.”  

Bible scholars have long supposed that Ezekiel experienced a vision of heavenly creatures similar to the Seraphim described in Isaiah 6, or the creatures the Apostle John saw around God’s throne as recorded in Revelation 4, each of whom had one of the four faces Ezekiel described. (The meaning of that business about wheels was anybody’s guess.) But the NASA scientist proposed that Ezekiel may have actually interacted with what we call (or what Hollywood calls) aliens----extraterrestrials, life forms who traveled to earth from another planet in a spacecraft (a wheel in the middle of a wheel) far more advanced than anything yet produced by man. I don’t remember the scientist’s name, but we’ll call him Zulcan.  

“Isn’t Zulcan the name of your home planet, Rusty?”

I’ll deal with you later, Pretty Boy. 

Our seminary president, Dr. Carl McIntire, must have been impressed with Zulcan’s book or lecture, because he arranged to have him speak at a seminary chapel. His presentation included slides of an artist's renderings of Ezekiel's visions interspersed with grainy images of UFO's captured by pilots or other earthlings.  If you’re thinking that the weight of evidence that Ezekiel saw aliens who visited Earth in a spacecraft must be (of necessity) on the light side, you are thinking clearly. Furthermore, if you’re wondering what difference it makes whether Ezekiel saw angels created by God, or other life forms created by God, you’re thinking the way I was thinking in that chapel.

“At least you were thinking, Rusty. The only thing in the mind of your parishioners is usually, “When is this guy gonna stop talking?”

“Parishioners,” that’s a big word for you, Tommy, four syllables. Good boy! Who’s a good boy?  Now go get a cookie.

As I was about to say, Zulcan’s presentation was a bit hard for the student body to swallow, and let’s just say it didn’t make it onto the short list of particularly edifying chapel messages.

“Wait here, Rusty. Let me run and find my list of your particularly edifying messages. I think I wrote it on the back of a postage stamp.” 

How could you have finished that cookie already, Pretty Boy?

“As a matter of fact, I ate four of them, and a slice of pie. While I’m here, let me ask, for the benefit of your two or three remaining Stale Bread readers, is anything interesting actually going to happen in this story?” 

I’m getting to it, Tommy.

Faith Seminary was housed in Lynnewood Hall, a huge Neoclassical Revival mansion built at the end of the Nineteenth Century for industrialist Peter Widener. The vacant estate had fallen into the hands of the non-profit seminary because the taxes for a private owner would have been astronomical. The mansion has a huge atrium, dominated by a chandelier that seems in my memory to be at least twenty or thirty feet above the marbled floor. It was the first thing that on-campus students would see as they descended the grand staircase from their rooms each day. 

I think it was the morning after Zulcan's visit that those students were shocked to see what appeared to be a flying saucer hovering in mid-air a few feet below the chandelier.  On closer inspection, it was determined to be a hubcap hanging on fishing line.  As you may imagine, this brought the student body no little amusement.  

“Your readers would be thrilled with even a little amusement.”

Shush, Pretty Boy. Lie down.

At the same time, this brought the administration no little consternation; because I don't think the seminary owned a freestanding ladder tall enough to reach it.

The student body quickly determined that the perpetrators of the caper would need both audacity and sagacity, audacity to conceive and attempt such a stunt, and sagacity to determine how it could be done. Phil and Al (the tormentors of Dr. Dickie’s dog Jolly in the aforementioned story) quickly became the prime suspects. 

It seems to me that several weeks went by before the powers-that-were found a way to remove the IHO (Identified Hanging Object). If you sneak into the now vacant estate, you may find a telltale fishing line still hanging from the chandelier.  I don't remember how the hubcap was removed, but you'll be relieved to hear that I’m pretty sure it didn't involve flinging Jolly onto it.  Perhaps Phil or Al can be induced to comment below as to whether a flying Jolly was involved in placing the hubcap there. They may be more forthcoming now that Dr. Dickie is either home with the Lord or over 125 years old and presumably not able to read a font this small. To be clear, the evidence that Phil and Al were the culprits is only circumstantial (although I'm not aware that they've ever offered convincing denials of participation). Jolly remains a canine of interest.

“I suppose that prank may have been mildly amusing to bored seminary students, Rusty; but there’s something I don’t get. Why would you come down so hard on this Zulcan fellow’s theory, given that you told me that as a child you were abducted and probed by aliens? 

I can’t believe you would say that, Tommy!  I told you that, as I explained, in confidence!

“Oh, ‘in confidence’------my bad, I misheard you. I thought you said you were telling me to explain your incontinence.”

What?  That doesn’t even make sense!  Why would I need to explain my incontinence to you?  I mean, if I were incontinent, which I’m not. 

“Because it's helpful information. Suppose we're watching a ball game, and you hop up and rush to the bathroom? Knowing that the alien probe left you incontinent would explain your behavior. It’s a medical condition; there’s no shame in it. You remember that Sunday when you were so late getting into the pulpit?  A new couple beside me was getting restless. I told them not to be alarmed; I explained that sometimes you suddenly have to use the rest room----as a consequence of the alien probe you endured as a child.” 

What? You told them that?  What new couple? 

“I don’t remember. I don’t think I saw them at church again.”

That’s a shocker!  

“Now don’t go blaming that on me, Rusty. I didn’t preach that Sunday.”

This is entirely inappropriate, Tommy. I tolerate your intrusions because I’m a tolerant man, but telling church visitors and my readers about my alien abduction is going too far. Furthermore, you’ve misled them about that incontinence business. 

“Wait a minute. Didn’t you say in your last story that you and your seminary classmates falsely accused your teacher’s dog of incontinence?” 

Not exactly, I said she jumped to that conclusion when she saw the puddle. We just didn’t correct her. 

“So, you can dish it out, but you can’t take it. You know the old adage, ‘What’s good for the pooch is good for the preacher.’”

I’m pretty sure that’s not an old adage.

“Well, it should be. Now you’d better wrap this up, Rusty; you’ve been sitting at your laptop a long time. We wouldn’t want you to have an accident.” 

I appreciate your concern, Tommy.

The Bible does have something to say about aliens (quite a bit, in fact) but not the interplanetary kind. Among the most important is this: 

Believers are not to mistreat or oppress aliens but are to extend to them kindness and love.

God commanded the people of Israel: “You shall neither mistreat a stranger (an alien) nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21)  

In Deuteronomy we read, “The LORD your God…administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. Therefore, love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Deut.10:17-19)  

The Lord Jesus affirmed this in one of his most familiar parables. (Luke 10).   

A lawyer had just correctly summarized the second table of God’s moral law with the words, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But Luke says that the lawyer, “wanting to justify himself,” proceeded to ask Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 

Jesus answered, as he often did, with a story: 

“A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead.” 

Two Jewish religious leaders came down the road, saw the man in need, and “passed by on the other side.” 

But a Samaritan (a stranger, a foreigner, an alien) “came where he was. And when he saw him” (a man who was a stranger, a foreigner, an alien to him) “he had compassion. So, he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.” On the next day, when the Samaritan departed, he left money with the innkeeper and said to him, 

“’Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’”  

Jesus then asked the lawyer, “So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among thieves?”

And he said, “He who showed mercy on him.” 

Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” 

The Lord is urging us, in as clear terms as we can imagine, in both this passage and others (see Matthew 25:31-46) to show compassion to the alien (as well as to the fatherless, the widow, the refugee, the prisoner and the poor).  Whether they are fleeing Taliban suppression in the Middle East, Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, or Drug Gang oppression in Central America, they are to be considered our neighbors. Unscrupulous leaders may stoke the fear of aliens for political gain; it has proven to be a winning strategy for centuries. But if those of us who call ourselves Christians harden our hearts toward the alien, we are rebuked by our Supreme Commander:

“Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46)

 

NOTE: Some scholars believe that Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan was based on a real incident, and that the wounded man on the road was Simon Zulcanus of Jericho, a prominent merchant, who became a follower of Christ. It's believed that he recovered from the brutal attack, but that for the rest of his life, Zulcanus (Zulcan in the English) was incontinent. Evidently some scholars will believe anything.