The other day my friend and I were discussing alien abductions. What prompted our conversation was a recent report of cattle mutilations in Missouri. (I could provide you with a link, but come on, you don’t need to be reading that stuff….)
So anyhow, that made me think of all the movies I’ve seen
over the years about alien abductions and all the unmentionable experiments
they apparently did on us earthlings. And that reminded me of the one time in
my life I encountered a UFO. Here’s the story…
While I was attending Denver Seminary, back in the Coolidge
administration, I taught an evangelism course for a church near Colorado
Springs. I had preached in the church a time or two, and they invited me to do
a Monday through Friday series on how to share the gospel.
The sessions began every evening at 7, so I left our
seminary apartment about 5:30, picked up a hamburger on the way, and headed
south on I-25. I figured out a short-cut that allowed me to get off the freeway
and drive through what was then rural, farming country. The sessions ran about
90 minutes, so I finished up at the church by 8:30 or so, and got home before 10.
On this particular night I was on my way back, pleasantly
relaxed after having done, I thought, a decent job in my presentation and the Q
& A that followed. The road I was driving was lonely and dark. Like I said,
back then it was rural, with no street lamps or office buildings or traffic
lights. Just me in my yellow VW bug.
I slowed down to navigate a curve on the dirt road, and
happened to glance up in the night sky. It was a pretty evening, pitch black,
studded with stars, but then I saw it. Maybe a half mile or so away, hovering
over a field, was a series of bright red lights. I slowed down even more, and
it seemed like the lights stayed put. Oh,
boy, I thought to myself. This is
really happening. I’m really seeing this. Who’s going to believe me?
I wasn’t afraid, exactly, but I did think about how vulnerable I was. My little car wouldn’t outrun a 10-speed bike, let alone an extra-terrestrial vehicle powered by phonehomium or whatever advanced and futuristic fuel they used.
Now I was driving cautiously, sort of like a deer sneaking
up on a pride of lions. The spacecraft, or whatever it was, seemed to be moving
closer. I thought that maybe they had downshifted into first and were beginning
to check me out. What primitive vehicle might this be, with its odd shape and its ugly little hominid operator? (Rough
English translation, since you probably don’t speak Bivalvian.)
So anyway, as I got closer, I could see the lights were
incredibly bright and that they ran the length of the ship vertically. I
figured it must be 50 feet high at least. I’d like to tell you that I prayed
and quoted Scripture, or even that I wanted to share Jesus with them. But
honestly, I just stared, with my mouth open.
Finally I decided to stop and confront them. After all, maybe they come in peace, I
thought. I shouldn’t assume they want to
do orifice-probing or stick me in a cage for their viewing pleasure.
I parked my car on the side of the road, all the while
fixated on this massive display of lights that seemed to run all the way from
the ground to the height of a 5 or 6 story building. I shut off the engine and stepped out of the car. My heart was hammering in my chest. They can probably sense my fear, I
thought.
I stood there a minute, collecting my thoughts, wondering if
I’d ever see my wife again. But then, as I looked at the spacecraft, the long row of
lights, my great powers of observation finally kicked in. Oh, it’s a radio antenna.
Which is what I thought all along.
