Re: [Vo]:Divine Intervention

[Edmund Storms]

Stephen, why do you assume the child was any less supernatural than the 
rabbi? It seems to me we have only two possibilities.

1. Both the rabbi and the child were real and left the scene without 
being noticed. This seems unlikely since help was at hand.

2. Both the rabbi and the child were an image provide to the soldier as 
a message. Only a combination of the two images would make the message 
have any value.

Another question not discussed is, "Are such encounters actually in the 
physical world or are they images created within the brain by the spirit 
world?"

Ed


Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:



OrionWorks wrote:

Perhaps against my better judgment I feel compelled to share the
following incident. FWIW I believe it is a truthful account.

A couple of years ago at one of those informal UFO meetings I attend
in the Milwaukee area I had an unusual conversation with a good
acquaintance of mine. I'll call him "Danny", not his real name. Danny
is a generous and gregarious fellow who often hosts these gatherings
at his humble abode. I've grown accustomed to visiting Danny and enjoy
catching up on the latest family matters. To my surprise I've
discovered that I really have enjoyed his company despite the fact
that he is, hands down, the most staunch conservative republican I
have ever encountered in my bleeding heart Liberal Democratic life. He
knows of my political predilections as well. By some miracle Danny and
I seem to have acquired an amusing way of poking fun at each other's
extremisms.

Danny possesses a spectacular satellite photo of the entire state of
Israel, as tall as my 5 foot 9 inch stature that proudly hangs on a
wall. His refrigerator is stuffed with dog-eared photos of republican
candidates he admires, including a few he had the privilege of
personally shaking hands with. Danny is in the business of commercial
Real Estate. His humble abode reveals the fact that his line of
profession has been very good to him and to his family. Perhaps
"humble abode" should be taken as a euphemism. Danny has lots of nice
expensive toys, and he enjoys sharing them with his guests.

It should come as no surprise to all that Danny is of the Jewish 
faith. Very.

One evening Danny took me aside to tell me of an account he had just
gotten from his son who at that time was serving in the Israeli army.
I'll call him "Jimmy", not his real name. Jewish American born
citizens can share duel citizenship with Israel, and as such, can
serve in the Israeli army. Danny and his wife being the concerned
parents that they were, were worried about their son's safety, but
they didn't disapprove of his desire to protect Israel. Jimmy son went
to Israel and quickly got into the thick of things.

One particular account I was told happened when Jimmy, along with
several of his comrades were sweeping through a devastated
neighborhood recently reduced to rubble. During a brief lull in the
fighting Jimmy came across an open clearing where to his astonishment
in the center of the rubble was a rabbi holding protectively onto a
small child. It appeared as if the rabbi was trying to protect the
small child under his long black coat. Jimmy was astonished to find
these two individuals smack dab in the center of an extremely
dangerous environment. The Rabbi noticed Jimmy's presence and motioned
him to approach him. Jimmy complied, no doubt trying to figure out
where in the hell these two had come from, but worse, how in the hell
to get them safely out. Once face to face, the rabbi asked Jimmy if he
would take the small boy currently under his protective coat and out
of harm's way. The rabbi extended his hand. In his palm was some
money, the equivalent of around ten dollars. The rabbi apparently
wanted to give Jimmy money, to make it worth his time and effort.
Jimmy was incensed. He was outraged that a rabbi would attempt to
essentially bribe him, as if money would have been the only incentive
he needed to make sure a small helpless boy would be taken out of
harms way. Jimmy turned around to bark an order to one of his
comrades, but when he turned back to instruct the rabbi where the two
of them should be lead off to, both had disappeared. Jimmy had been
face to face talking with two extremely misplaced enigmas in his life,
and now they were nowhere in sight.

Jimmy knew instantly as sure as anything that he had just had a close
encounter with an angel. The encounter affected him profoundly. Later
in the week when he was once again in the middle of another deadly
fire fight and as he heard bullets whiz past his head he knew,
utterly, that he would be protected, that some kind of divine
providence was watching over him. Jimmy's parents when he called them
long-distance some time later were, of course, aghast at portions of
Jimmy's story, NOT that their son had had a close encounter with an
Angel, rather that Jimmy seemed so sure of himself that he was
"protected." Jimmy's parents weren't as convinced as Jimmy was that he
would make it out alive. His parent's were concerned that Jimmy,
because of his profound experience and subsequent conviction, might
not take proper precautions. But Jimmy did make it out alive,
fortunately. I subsequently saw Jimmy several times at these informal
UFO gatherings.

Several thoughts come to mind:

I find it interesting that Divine Intervention chose to ask Jimmy to
protect the small child. Why didn't Divine Intervention proceed to
protect the child themselves. Presumably Divine Intervention is
powerful enough to have done so.



But Steve, you said the small child vanished along with the rabbi.  So, 
presumably, the small child -- if it was a child, and not a cherub or 
some such -- was indeed protected by the rabbi/angel, who spirited the 
child off somewhere.  There was apparently never any need, nor real 
desire, for Jimmy to actually do anything with or for the child.

This leads inevitably to the conclusion that the whole thing, if it 
really was supernatural, was "staged" for the edification/enlightenment 
of Jimmy.  Otherwise the it makes no sense I can see, either physical or 
metaphysical.

If we accept the existence of angels, then we presumably also must 
accept some number of the accounts of them, and the accounts with which 
I'm familiar generally have them functioning as communicators rather 
than actors.  Angels bring messages to people more often than they 
actually do things for (or to) people, at least according to the Bible. 
 As messengers the rabbi and the child may make some sense.  As a 
solicitor of aid the rabbi makes no sense (unless, of course, we decide 
he was purely human, and panicked when Jimmy turned his back and 
disappeared into some hidey hole Jimmy didn't notice).

FWIW theophanies of one sort or another are relatively common, or so I 
have read in some rather serious journal some time in the past.  Take 
that factoid as you like.

************************

An aside, which is not all that closely tied to this particular tale: In 
general I have trouble with the argument "God wants us to learn for 
ourselves, so God will just give us mild warnings and let it go at 
that".  If I am taking care of a small child, I will indeed prefer that 
the child work out his or her own problems, as being the more 
educational path.  However, if I see the child attempting to set fire to 
the dog just to see what will happen, I will intervene in order to save 
the dog, rather than letting the incident proceed in order to better 
"educate" the child, at some potentially large cost to the dog.

What humans are doing to the other occupants of Earth just now (you 
know, the furry and feathered ones) strikes me as not so dissimilar to 
the aforementioned child's experiment with the dog.

The (implicitly expressed) view that God cares only about the humans on 
Earth strikes me as terribly anthropocentric.



How did Jimmy know he was utterly protected?



People who experience a theophany may find that it has long lasting 
repercussions on their perception of things.


Was Jimmy being protected
because he was special, that Divine Providence had seemingly smiled on
his presence? Perhaps, but then, maybe Jimmy was being divinely
protected in order to fulfill one of Divine Providence's objectives -
to live long enough to tell others of his close encounter.

Some of you may have noticed that I never mentioned whether the small
helpless boy the rabbi was protecting was of Israeli or Palestinian
descent.



Given the frame of the story I just assumed the child was Palestinian; 
that seemed so obvious that there was no need for you to state it.

Anything else wouldn't make sense -- you can find rabbis (and priests, 
and, no doubt, mullahs) in all kinds of places, performing a variety of 
works, but you don't typically find small children far behind "enemy 
lines" in the middle of a fire fight.  Ergo the child must have been 
native to the neighborhood, which made him Palestinian.



Based on the fact that the neighborhood Jimmy was patrolling
was in utter shambles, one can draw their own conclusion.



Indeed, as far as I can recall no Jewish neighborhood has been hit that 
hard since ... what ... the Golan Heights battles quite a few years 
back, and maybe not even then.  The neighborhood seemed obviously to be 
either in Gaza or the west bank.


But really,
does it matter?



Of course it matters.  If the whole incident was staged to educate Jimmy 
then it has far more impact if the rabbi/angel was saving a Palestinian 
child.

The money makes sense, then, too -- it's saying something about how much 
the Israeli military seems to value Palestinian children: the 
rabbi/angel seemed to feel a Jewish soldier would not protect a 
Palestinian child without some kind of payment.

If the child was Jewish then the incident degenerates into senselessness 
from any point of view, IMHO.



Regards
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com
www.zazzle.com/orionworks