Flying Saucers ( OR Ezekiel OR What Happens When I Have a Quiet Peaceful Day)

Flying Saucers (or Ezekiel or What Happens When I Have a Quiet, Peaceful Day)

The pewter angel I wrote about a while back got me thinking about angels in general, and I decided to tackle the books in the Bible that have angels all over them. The Glory Books, they seem to me: Ezekiel, Daniel, Revelations. It seems to me I have seen plenty of human angels lately, angels with heart conditions, with bald heads, with big Persian eyes, or eternally blue shirts, but I wanted to check out the other kind. The alien kind. I have just finished Ezekiel, so I want to write about it (lucky you, it's one of those quiet, peaceful days) but to tell the truth, the angels were not on center stage as far as I could tell, which is not what you’d expect if aliens showed up somewhere on our planet, today. No, we’d be making a big Hollywood film, for sure. Somehow Ezekiel avoided getting sidetracked by the whole alien thing and even forgot all about them as he moved on to his prophetic message. That’s how you know he was really a prophet. Man, there was no distracting him. This is what I got from Ezekiel, if you’re interested.

I made myself speed read the book, taking in big gulps of it all at once, whole concepts. I like reading like this, unless it’s a book like Heretics and Heroes, where I have to slow down to a donkey’s pace to catch the juicy stuff. Ezekiel has detail galore, but some of it’s boring. Can I be honest? Do you enjoy reading that “He measured the east side with his measuring rod, and it was 875 feet long. Then he measured the north side, and it was also 875 feet. The south side was also 875 feet, so the area was 875 feet on each side(!) (emphasis mine) Don’t get me wrong. There is a reason for these details, and they need to stay in Ezekiel, and some day they will fill me with wonder. Just give me time. Meanwhile, I’m speed reading.

The chunks of Ezekiel look like this:

·         Angels looking like flying saucers lift off the Jewish Temple when God’s presence abandons it.

·         Ezekiel thrashes everyone for being so idolatrous and disobedient.

·         God promises them a new heart, eventually, when the punishments are all over.

·         He promises they will know who sent their troubles and why.

·         Trouble, trouble, and more trouble. To everyone all around. Looks like nuclear holocaust to me. Horrible stuff.

·         Then the people come back, and the Temple comes back, and it’s picture perfect. Fits the plan to the micron.

·         Glory comes back. The Law works. The Prince is not corrupt but does his duty.

·         There is a River that can heal anything, even the Dead Sea.

·         Ok, this is the one that got me in the throat. This last one. The last chapter. Are you ready?    THE LOST TRIBES COME BACK.

So if this is not getting to you like it’s getting to me, let me explain. See, when the Northern Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians, the people didn’t go into Exile together like their Judean neighbors would later do in Babylon. No, the Assyrians had a much crueler policy. They would take their prisoners and scatter them throughout their kingdom, mixing them up with every other kind of people. Those prisoners would not have any chance of keeping their culture intact, much less their political identity. When the people of Israel left their tribal lands, they were lost for good, never to return in any recognizable way. So what is God promising here? What is Ezekiel saying? How in the world do those tribes come back and know it is their own God who brought them? They don’t even know they were ever Hebrew. Today most of them are scattered throughout the Middle East without any trace of Jewishness in their memory. How can this promise be possible?

I can’t answer that question. Nor can I answer the question of why God threatens them all so harshly before he gives that promise. He looks like he’s just out to punish, but I KNOW that’s not his way. What am I missing here?  I have a theory, and you can tell me what you think: There is no way to reach heaven without going through hell first—no way to reach forgiveness without repentance. When we mess up, mess happens, and that is the way God set up Science, so it’s His doing, if you want to see it that way, but let me tell you, not one drop of consequence gets wasted. I mean there is not one tear, not one stab of pain happening to anyone anywhere that we don’t need as a race to turn us around. God chases us down until we come back. He refuses to let us go. He haunts us. Inexorably, as George MacDonald pegs it. God stops at nothing, even Holocaust, to get us back. He was willing to suffer and die to have us back, and he’s willing to let us suffer and die to get us back, but he’s getting us back, and He hates the hurt it takes. And when He finally gets His way, the suffering ends. So Ezekiel paints the story in pictures: angels taking away the glory when we fail; God coming after us, even cruelly as it seems at the time; our returning in pure, repentant love; dead bones coming alive; then—THEN--perfect GLORY.

So it seems to me that Ezekiel is about not taking shortcuts. It’s about the pain of the process and the relentlessness of God. It’s about how he never lets go, no matter how utterly lost we are.  And it’s about aliens watching this with myriads of eyes and endless wonder.