Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (40 page)

standing there on a round hill; you can also see some parts of the city walls and you can see flags and standards fluttering in the tower and the castle from the side where the village of Quetz lies. No one can approach them. In the same way no one can say what all this means and no one can behold the scene without the hair of their head standing up, for this is a miraculous and terrifying occurrence.

The unidentified man from heaven - obviously of Christian origin because of his threat (Mend your ways or your end is nigh!) - caused great confusion by his appearance at Besancon. Those who are to be kept in fear of the Lord need an unequivocal sign from time to time. Besancon must have had an exemplary effect on the whole countryside.

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Since the story of human intelligence has been told there have been visions in all religions and civilizations. They have taken place up to the present day and will always do so.

Belonging as I do to the Christian West, brought up in the Roman Catholic doctrine of deliverance and salvation, knowing that this book will be read mainly by readers from the Western world, I am primarily concerned with Christian visions. But it is also true, and I would like to say so explicitly, that similar data giving rise to similar questions could be reported from Asiatic, African, Indian and South American regions. If I were to go into all these phenomena (which would be entirely possible!) the result would be a volume the size of the Manhattan phone book. However, in order that the reader may have some idea of the ubiquity of visions, I have added a VISION ALMANAC, at the end of the book.

It records facts only, but it makes clear to anyone familiar with such phenomena in the Christian sphere that visions are by no means solely a Christian, and are certainly not an exclusively Catholic, privilege.

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The Jews did not recognize Jesus as the Redeemer and so His Holy Family did not concern them in the least. Why then does the Old Testament literally teem with visions? Two angels appeared to Abraham, and also to Lot before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha. Jacob, son of Isaac, who defrauded his brother Esau of his birthright with a 'mess of potage', had to wrestle with an angel near the ford at Jabbok. Moses witnessed vision after vision. The best known was on Mount Sinai where he was commanded by Yahweh to free the people from their captivity in Egypt. The story is that for forty years the Israelites followed a vision that shone like a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. (7)

Even Bileam, who has the reputation of being a false prophet and a heretic, experienced a vision of God, and Nebuchadnezzar, who certainly has not gone down in history as one of the elect, was surprised by the vision of a 'writing hand' during a banquet in Babylon. The archangel Raphael (today patron saint of chemists) appeared to the heroic Tobiases, father and son, in the apocryphal Book of Tobit. In addition to other visions, the Son of Man appeared to the pious David on a cloud in heaven -

i.e. at a time when the 'Christian' Son of Man did not even exist! Solomon, King of Israel and Judah, to whom we are indebted for the 'judgments of Solomon', which are unfortunately so seldom recognized as such, saw the 'Lord' several times, according to his own account. And we must not forget that