[Vo]:Re: Divine Intervention

[Michel Jullian]

Just wondering, haven't you fellow androids drifted slightly off topic in this 
and the other (oil gang) thread?

Michel

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Edmund Storms" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 11:07 PM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Divine Intervention


> 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
>>>
>> 
>> 
>