One of my memories of arriving home from school and watching bad TV re-runs in the early 80s involves a show called Project UFO. It was a show supposedly based on US Air Force investigations of paranormal sightings. The voice-over for the opening credits said (and you really should try and say this in the deepest and most significant voice you can muster),
Ezekiel saw the wheel. This is the wheel he said he saw. These are Unidentified Flying Objects that people say they are seeing now. Are they proof that we are being visited by civilizations from other stars? Or just what are they? What you are about to see is part of [a] 20-year search.
I have just started reading through Ezekiel again, and the opening chapter triggered the memory. Ezekiel saw a vision of God. But it’s a vision that’s hard to get your head around. There are creatures with four-sided heads, and each side is different (one side is human, one is a lion, one an ox and one an eagle). And the creatures have four wings, human hands and feet like a cow. And each of the creatures has a wheel that is full of eyes—a wheel that doesn’t turn around. What would someone say if they walked into your church on Sunday and heard someone reading the words of Ezekiel chapter 1?
Yet, perhaps strangely, they are words that are supposed to comfort. Why? Well, the creatures and the wheels form a celestial chariot. And on the chariot rides the Lord himself, which is incredibly significant for Ezekiel and his friends. The chariot of God’s glory is symbolic of God’s freedom. In chapters 8-11, God mounts his chariot and rides out of the temple in Jerusalem towards the east. Ezekiel is living about 1000 km away in the east by the Chebar river in far-flung Babylon. The word of God to the exiles—to those living as aliens in a strange land—was that you didn’t need the temple to have the presence of God; God could go wherever he desires. And part of his desire was to be with the exiles. They were not alone. God was present, even when they were far away.
Now, it’s not all comforting, of course. The holy, righteous God whose voice is like the roaring of the waterfall and who dwells in glory was the God who was present with them. And, as Ezekiel would later point out, they needed a new heart and a new Spirit (Ezek 36).
But how comforting is that vision for us? On this side of Jesus’ death and resurrection, God’s people are the temple in which he dwells. And now, as those living as aliens and strangers in a land that isn’t our home, the righteous and holy God has dealt with our sins and made us his children, and is present with his people by his Spirit. He is the same holy and unapproachable God that Ezekiel saw, except he calls us his children and we call him ‘Father’.
Ezekiel didn’t see aliens; he saw the holy, righteous creator of heaven and earth. That’s why he could live rightly, despite being an alien in this world. I don’t know about you, but I want to live as an alien, rather than see an alien. Therefore I don’t need visions of UFOs, but instead I need a constant reminder of the face of Christ, reflected in his perfect word so that I will know God and know myself, and live like this isn’t home.
I refer to the vision as “an ark with four-wheel drive,” demonstrating to the exiles that God can go wherever they go.
As a 15 or 16 year old new Christian, I used to go with others to the local shops & try to chat with people about Jesus.
I hadn’t even heard of Ezekiel when a guy said, ‘Doesn’t the Bible teach about aliens at the start of Ezekiel?’
No evangelistic conversation since then has ever been quite as scary.
Hi Paul,
I recall hearing a talk (I think at the City Bible Forum) where the preacher taught us that the imagry of Ezekiel 1 borrowed heavily from that of Babylonian religion. Thus God was saying that he was with the exiles, even in a strange land. Have you read anything that would support this theory?
I don’t remember Project UFO, but I certainly remember Great Mysteries of the World, with Leonard Nimoy providing the Deep Voice and Mahler the music!
ObTheo:I would like to meet an alien, just to hear their conception of God. Not that I think CS Lewis was right in thinking that aliens might not necessarily be fallen—my gut feeling is that the universe which we can apprehend is fallen.