Open Skies, Closed Minds For the First Time a Government Ufo Expert Speaks Out

"AND OUT OF THE FIRE WENT FORTH LIGHTNING." And I looked and behold a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire. Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot; and they sparkled like the color of burnished brass . . . As for the likeness of the living creatures, this appearance was like burning coals of fire and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning . . . Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of a beryl; and they four had one likeness; and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. When they went, they went upon their four sides, and they turned not when they went. As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes around about them four. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. So runs Chapter One of the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, according to the King James Bible of 1611. Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi in the land of the Chaldeans saw visions of God "and the heavens were opened." Old Testament stories are notoriously open to interpretation. Ezekiel goes onto describe the throne of God with its rainbow light in a conventional way, the sort of thing that Michelangelo would paint centuries later. Yet, even after we weight the balance of allegories, dreams, fantasies and hallucinations induced by religious ecstasy, and even after we remember that the Bible has undergone various translations from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, there is something oddly mechanical about this description. The flame, the lightning, the wheels, even the curious movement of the vision--"they went every one straight forward . . . and they turned not as they went"--corresponds to many recent eyewitness accounts of unidentified craft landing. "As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes"--could this be the glittering circles of light emitted from the fuselage of "flying saucers?" For centuries, humanity has been fascinated by the skies. The kingdom of the clouds, the arc of the rainbow, the myriad points of light in the night; all this has been woven by timid, poetic humans into an image of their own making. The thunder is God's barrels rolling around the empty sky. The rainbow is the symbol of God's promise never to send another flood. And in the darkness, starlight is the radiance of Heaven shining through the peppered curtain of the night. What early humans did not understand, they were afraid of, and worshipped as a god. The rain, the sun, the moon, the stars, the thunder and the winds--all these perfectly natural phenomena were attributed to some sort of divinity. And, as our confidence and knowledge grew, we personalized the Heavens, finding animal and human likenesses in the constellations--the Great Bear, Orion the Hunter, the Seven Sisters. And the Heavens controlled our destinies, so that momentous events on Earth were foretold by bizarre activity in the skies. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 793 describes "fiery dragons" over Northumbria. This was a decade when the Northern Saxon kingdoms were hit time and time again by Viking raids along their coasts.Pope, Nick is the author of 'Open Skies, Closed Minds For the First Time a Government Ufo Expert Speaks Out' with ISBN 9780440234890 and ISBN 0440234891.