Meanwhile, I grew increasingly sure that bearing down on us was an alien of the species I had seen in the palace.

I was on the verge of trying to warn the man with a loud whisper and wild hand signals (who knows if he understood English?) when he looked up, noticed the approaching being and slowly stood to greet him. To my shock, as he rose to his feet he began to grow taller and bulkier. Somehow his clothing kept up with the growth and it, too, began to change in appearance. A chill shot through me as this lifeform continued to mutate. His beard faded until it disappeared, while the hair on his head changed and his facial features grew increasingly alien. I stared goggle-eyed as his skin turned golden and began to glow. This can’t be real! What is happening to me?

But how could it possibly not be real? my mind countered. The notion of these recent episodes being some type of illusion raised far more impossibilities than it offered the slightest explanation. It was not remotely like any dream I have ever had. I have no idea what drugs are capable of. Maybe under their influence, unreality could seem this real but time and again what I have experienced since supposedly leaving earth far exceeds my powers of imagination. And when could I have been drugged?

My mind scanned my last day on earth, hunting for the slightest possibility. It had been such a lazy day that I never left the house. No one had any opportunity to slip drugs into anything I had consumed. I had eaten no mushrooms, nor any food that might have passed its use-by date. I had not felt the slightest unwell – no fever, no fall or knock on the head, no headache, no event when my skin could have been punctured. There is no family history of mental disorders.

Perhaps what I next did was ridiculous but I knocked my knuckles on a rock. It not only hurt; I bled. It certainly felt and looked real.

I turned my analysis to the time since apparently leaving earth. Other than feeling groggy upon first arriving here, my mind has seemed quite sharp. Of course there was the spider bite but I was seeing bizarre things long before the bite. The spider itself was bizarre before it even bit me!

Running out of options, I felt forced to just one conclusion. This has to be real!

I was not yet confident I could accurately distinguish between the extraterrestrials I had so far seen. In the endless palace I had glanced at countless thousands of them. Nevertheless, every one that I had so far studied close up – as much as I dared – was quite distinctive in appearance. Even relative to the others, the transformed being in front of me was particularly tall and muscular, with a nose a little broader and forehead a little higher than most. His eyes were like flaming arrows. It was my guess that the magnificent lifeform that the man had somehow transmuted into was Chebon.

The other alien of superhuman proportions continued to walk toward us. “What’s wrong, Chebon?” he asked.

So it is Chebon! I congratulated myself.

“I’ve just returned from a distressing earth mission,” Chebon replied, sounding dejected.

His voice was richer, more majestic and less human than before his transformation. Even though he was complaining, the very nobility and nonhuman aspects of his voice commanded such respect that I think even if I were blind, just hearing these beings’ voices would give me goosebumps.

The words earth mission galvanized my attention. My own pounding heart made it obvious why they would disguise themselves when visiting earth. People could literally die in a stampede of fleeing humans.

“Have you ever been there?” he asked.

“No,” responded the newcomer. His voice seemed tinged with slight regret, but who can be sure with nonhumans? “I’ve never left this dimension.” Then his eyes lighted up. “Powering through the dimensional interphase must be sensational!”

“Powering through the dimensional interphase”? What’s he talking about? Is there more to skipping between worlds than I realized? What had I missed by losing consciousness when flitting from world to world? This realm had me bubbling with questions like a little child, but no one was giving me answers. Everyone seemed to treat me as if I wasn’t even there. The only consolation was that in the presence of these fearsome beings, I preferred to be ignored.

As usual, the aliens’ lip movements did not correspond with the words I was hearing. If my sound shell theory is correct, is there some form of invisible barrier around me through which the sound of aliens speaking in their native tongue does not penetrate? Could this same barrier act a little like a one way mirror, allowing me to see through it but rendering me invisible? But the animals could see me. Then again, they said nothing that needed translating. I found myself alternating between viewing my unanswered questions as fascinating mysteries and exasperating – even potentially dangerous – ignorance.

As I puzzled over being treated as if I were not there, I began to wonder what would happen if I jumped in the path of a moving alien. Would he walk right through me as if one of us – I’m not sure which – were a ghost. That was one experiment I wasn’t keen to perform.

Oblivious to my questions, the conversation continued. “It’s spectacular alright,” agreed Chebon. “And the galaxies aren’t bad, but the moment you touch down on that sin-infested planet – Ooooo.” He seemed to shudder in revulsion.

“Tell me about it!” begged the other alien excitedly.

“The human race is so perverse,” said Chebon, “You know, besides the heavenly sun, not one person on the entire planet is morally perfect!”

“ . . . the heavenly sun . . . person . . . morally perfect”? My mind raced. They can’t be talking about the sun! They must mean the son! But that raised more questions than ever. Who’s the son? Christians might think of Jesus, the Son of God, but they were referring to someone who is on earth right now. Who could that be?

“No one else on the entire plant is perfect?” repeated the newcomer. “I know that’s what they say, but it’s so hard to grasp. None?”

If you soon find yourself wanting to ditch this book, you have an inkling of how furious I grew as this conversation unfolded. To allay your concerns now, however, would sabotage the drama. I can only ask you to endure this with me until things improve.

“Unbelievable isn’t it!” responded Chebon. I’ll tell you how dreadful things are. Imagine two earthlings hate someone. Both wish the person were dead. One would never dare commit murder, merely because he’s afraid of his society’s punishment for that crime. The other one is brave enough to ignore the penalty and commits murder. Most earthlings would regard the one fearing punishment as quite respectable and the fearless one as depraved.”

“Surely not!” He had what I guessed to be a stunned look on his face. “Both passionately wish the person were dead and one is considered more moral because he’s a bigger coward?”

To hear them referring to us as ‘earthlings’ made my blood boil. Right then, I did not understand why I reacted so strongly. Later, when I was less riled and I overheard other extraterrestrials using the word, I was finally able to identify a couple of reasons. The term made me feel like an invisible extra in a B-grade sci-fi movie. That detonated an unwanted assortment of negative feelings. Additionally, the word felt to me somewhat condescending. I despised the way their very appearance made me feel inferior. That predisposed me to react against the slightest hint that they might think of themselves as being superior in any other way.

Only as I write this, however, do I think I have found the key reason for detesting the word: my mind was playing tricks on me. I now think my exaggerated annoyance at a single word was my mind’s attempt to excuse the inexplicable intensity of my emotional reaction – or to divert my attention from how irrational my anger was – over what they were saying about human morality. It is one thing for me to give lip service to a Christian doctrine or to acknowledge human failings; it is quite another to hear otherworldly aliens – irreconcilably different beings with no emotional or genetic ties to us – slandering the entire human race. If we made disparaging remarks about our species we would, of necessity, be including ourselves in our comments. They were not.

It was maddening – no, it was more than that, it hurt – to hear aliens bad-mouthing us. How dare they! These beings who have never had to walk in our shoes!

“Disgusting, isn’t it!” replied Chebon. “Their morality is so crude – it makes my skin creep.”

Hmmm . . . “makes my skin creep” . . . I’d have expected that to be a human expression. I tried to convince myself I needed to determine just how adapted to my linguistic preferences the translation I was being subjected could be. Unlike focusing on the word earthling, however, I was at least partially aware of what I think was my real motive. This time it was not an unconscious attempt to make my fury feel justified. On the contrary, so offensive was what I was hearing that I was trying to keep my cool by distracting myself.

“Do you understand sexuality?” continued Chebon.

The other alien’s eyes seemed to light up even more than usual, “Oh, yes! I’ve studied it. Fascinating!” He was almost whispering. “I know all about the peculiar reproductive powers of earthly creatures. It’s astounding – sharing in divine creativity not by using one’s mind, but one’s body, while at the same time achieving a sort of sacred, mystical union with another creature. It’s kind of like creating a new song and yet it’s a living being! There was awe and excitement in his voice. “Creating life! Can you imagine it? What a mind-balking, fearful task! And for humans the being that emerges is in the very image of the Stupendous Lord of Beauty! The result does not just honor God, but is in the very image of God! What a sacred, privileged responsibility!

“It’s like effortlessly sculpturing a masterpiece, using material from your own body. It’s like fashioning a most intricate, ingenious work of art while you sleep. It’s two beings so delighting in each other that they fuse together for life and that very act produces life. Two become one and suddenly there is more than two. They die to individuality and from that death springs life. In fact, their love explodes until they teem with life.”

“You sound almost envious!” laughed Chebon. “I assure you, no one would envy what they have become! You know about the perversions?”

The alien’s face darkened – almost literally. “Yes,” he said soberly, “How could they do that to themselves? What could ever drive anyone to defile oneself and trash such a priceless gift?”

“I have no idea. I don’t think any of us will ever understand depravity,” commented Chebon. “They call rape a terrible crime . . .”

“Right . . .” replied the other one, as if wondering where this was leading.

“. . . and yet some have the audacity to call it ‘love’ to seduce – to entice someone to willingly engage in adultery or fornication!”

“That can’t be right!” He stared at Chebon as if expecting him to correct himself, but Chebon stared right back. “Trying to make someone a willing partner in defilement – threatening someone’s eternity by attempting the sealing of a lifelong bond without lifelong commitment, or violating someone’s marital union – they call that defilement love?”

“Oh yes! It’s more prevalent in some societies than others but many humans who consider themselves moral actually get a buzz out of encouraging lust by the way they dress and behave. Many think it’s normal. Some even think it’s healthy! They’re blind to that evil and yet consider themselves moral just because they have an inkling of how hideous rape is.”

“How perverse!”

“Isn’t their behavior sickening!” said Chebon triumphantly. “Many seducers consider themselves better than rapists even though, as atrocious and emotionally wounding as rape is, it does not make the victim a willing participant in sin and so it leaves their spirit undefiled. I could spend earth-days listing their hypocrisies, Meurel.”

Meurel! So that’s his name! I felt as if I had fitted another part of the jigsaw. Okay, I admit it: I was trying to distract myself in an effort to constrain the anger churning within me. Their pompous, self-righteous conversation was tearing me apart. Trying to refute their logic was annoyingly hard but hearing it from alien goodie-goodie two-shoes was infuriating. We might find fault with our own species but that feels almost noble and decidedly different from being attacked by outsiders.

“Most of them realize it’s wrong to break their country’s imperfect laws,” continued Chebon, “but they think it’s quite acceptable to break their Creator’s perfect laws. They might acknowledge it’s wrong to exploit another human, but they think it quite all right to exploit their Maker! They are constantly plundering the planet he made, breathing the air he created, eating the food he’s provided for them, living in bodies he’s given them, yet they snub him and consider themselves self-made people. Every good thing they have ever experienced comes from the One they selfishly ignore. Even the sleazy illusion of pleasure they feel when sinning is possible only because the Holy One gave them the capacity to experience pleasure. Yet they ignore their loving Creator and even have the audacity to blame him when such a lifestyle doesn’t work!”

My overburdened mind staggered to contemplate how alien their concept of God might be. They clearly believe in a loving Creator, I told myself.

“Corrupt to the core!” commented Meurel.

“Utterly. There’s no basic difference between them and Lucifer. Like the devil himself, each of them has violated the laws of the Righteous One,” continued Chebon.

My blood pressure rose. I was too scared even to reveal myself, let alone confront these intimidating beings but how do I force back the anger about to spew out of me? Those arrogant, oversized . . . To my annoyance, I couldn’t rummage around in my befuddled brain quick enough to find an appropriately insulting name. Finally, blurting out all I could manage at such short notice, I shrieked in my head . . . buffoons!.

“And among the most atrocious,” added Chebon, “are those who think themselves godly.”

“What?” I thought Meurel seemed a little incredulous, but hoping to interpret an alien’s non-verbal signals is a minefield. I might have been merely transferring to him my own feelings, because I was certainly ready to dismiss the entire conversation as conceited nonsense.

“Oh, yes! It is not pagans or criminals or common folk who will arrange their Messiah’s murder but devout Bible scholars and revered religious leaders.”

“ . . . their Messiah’s murder . . . devout Bible scholars . . . ” Is he talking about Jesus? I panicked. What if this isn’t the Twenty-First Century? Somehow that felt even scarier than being in another galaxy. Space travel is at least on the fringe of human technology. Time travel is disturbingly different.

My mind was in overdrive. If they are talking about God and his Son (not sun) Jesus, could that palace have been heaven after all? Could these superhumans actually be angels?

I had already rejected the notion but now I felt driven to revisit it. If they were really angels, I’m not too comfortable with applying the word to them. Regardless of what those of biblical notoriety actually looked like, depictions in art and how I imagined them to look had little similarity to the ethereal giants I was looking at. Calling them angels is almost as nondescript as calling a Tyrannosaurus rex a lizard and is made even more inane by one’s knowledge of such creatures coming only from books and not from the horror of actually being terrorized by one.

Despite seeming an almost meaningless term, luminaries or perhaps celestial beings somehow seems more appropriate for these otherworldly lifeforms. If, for ease of communication, I ever revert to the word angel, any familiarity we might have with the word belies how heart-stopping these supernatural dignitaries were. Like such words as infinity, perfection and holiness, we bandy the word around until it has a deceptive ring of familiarity. We lull ourselves into the arrogance of forgetting we have nothing but the slightest conception of what we are talking about.

My mind was still wobbling. Hey! If they really are what we flippantly call angels, it’s no wonder that sexuality is such an issue with them. Jesus said angels aren’t sexual. It was only then that the uniqueness of each of these beings struck me as peculiar. Whereas sexual reproduction creates a natural variability, we all know that cloning produces more or less identical offspring. It was clear to me that these beings, although not created by sexual reproduction, are not clones in any sense that I am familiar with the term.

How were they created? Why did God go to all the effort to make every one of them unique? Surely we humans would have mass-produced them. I felt this must say something significant about how astoundingly superior to us God is, but I had to let the thought go because the conversation continued.

“It has always been, and will always be, that the ones most deceived and most hardened against the love and mercy of the forgiving Judge are those who arrogantly consider themselves better than others. These are the people who whitewash their own lust and would like to stone other perverts. By the hypocritical example they set, they send children to hell and then rage against abortionists who take innocent life. They defame the Flawless One by claiming to represent him while being filled with pride, selfishness and callousness. As the faithful Son says, they make their followers twice as fit for hell as they themselves are.”

I seethed. I’ve seen how convincingly Chebon had disguised himself. Could these beings actually be cunningly disguised demons sent to undermine my faith? I haven’t detected any deceit but maybe they are just insidiously skilled at it. Hey! Isn’t disguising themselves as a human a form of deceit? And if they’re so perfect what are they doing deceiving people into thinking they are human? I can’t trust these beings!

Another, even more disturbing but unlikely possibility was beginning to dawn: could my fury be masking a conscience that knew I was guilty of the vilest hypocrisy?

Chebon’s tirade was relentless. “Many speak continually of the Glorious One and yet seek not him but wealth, fame and human approval. They think themselves Godlike but in utter violation of his heart they hate their enemies and despise people who are not like them. They exalt themselves despite knowing the promise of the Faithful One that whoever does this will be brought low.”

Whether justified or not, my indignant fury kept compounding by the second.

“Even the few who pride themselves in condemning sexual perversion are still so perverted that if they trace back their family tree far enough, each of them is the product of lust or rape. Each human owes his or her very existence to perversion! And even without that hypocrisy and even disregarding all the times they themselves have lusted, they are not just sexual perverts but spiritual perverts. Every human is someone who is in the very image of the Holy One, acting like the devil himself. What could be more perverse? And the entire planet is infested with them!”

And I had thought I was angry earlier on! The volcano within me was ready to blow apart.

“That’s appalling!” commented Meurel. “And the irreligious are actually more righteous than the religious?”

“Oh, if only that were true, Meurel! Usually the irreligious self-righteously point the finger at the failings of the religious, only to try to turn the spotlight off their own dirty conscience and in a vain attempt to justify their own wickedness. Often, for example, they accuse religious leaders of being money-grubbing only because they are jealous. They want fame and riches themselves. Some even wish they could come up with their own scheme to rip people off. Hypocrites love deluding themselves into thinking they are taking the moral high ground. They accuse others of hypocrisy and of the very sins they commit in their hearts or wish they could get away with.”

With what might have been just the slightest hint of tenderness, Chebon added, “Nevertheless, there are non-believers who humbly acknowledge their wrong-doing and genuinely want to be righteous. Anyone acting this way is light-years ahead of those who accuse others.”

As Chebon’s tone softened, something appalling seized me. It was as if I looked in the mirror and for the first time in my life saw who I really was. And what I saw repulsed me.

I remembered back in the palace my expectation of reward for my clean lifestyle, intensive Bible study, prolonged times of prayer, sacrificial tithing, witnessing and on and on I could go. From early childhood I had been devoted to Christ. I had kept myself pure – by my measure, not God’s. Not only was I still a virgin, I had never once tasted alcohol, smoked, sampled drugs, gambled or even sworn. Even among exemplary Christians, such a record is so rare these days that I feel tempted to tone it down here lest you think I am exaggerating.

Now I felt disgusted by my foolish arrogance in thinking I deserved a reward. By divine standards – even, it seems, by angelic standards – I was as depraved as any other degenerate human. I had always acknowledged the theory that this applied to me before being born again, but what I had missed is that it applied to me right now. And thinking myself better than others made me even worse than any I looked down on. I loathed myself.

An incident in my youth began bobbing on the surface of my consciousness. Whenever I used to read in Isaiah, “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags,” I would picture in my mind a smelly, grease-covered rag you might find in a mechanic’s workshop. That was daft, of course. There was no engine grease in Bible times. Eventually, I discovered that the English word “filthy,” rather than “dirty,” was very deliberately chosen to translate the Hebrew word because the original referred not simply to dirt but to disgusting bodily filth.

My thoughts zipped to the Apostle Paul saying he regarded his loftiest attempts at righteousness as dung. One of the first New Testament Greek lexicons I ever owned said the word Paul chose was used in his era for offal – the innards of dead animals. That’s not a pretty picture. No longer was this an object of academic curiosity, however. I writhed, knowing just how much it applied to me. To draw attention to my ‘good’ living is as disgusting as proudly displaying used toilet paper, saying, “Look what I’ve done!”

Chebon continued his tirade. “Of course, genuine believers don’t look down on people. Filled with the beauty of the One they adore, they are tender-hearted and forgiving and love their enemies. By continually humbling themselves before the Everlasting Lord and maintaining a childlike dependence upon him, they remain free from the love of money and other sins that blind and enslave.”

Those words hit me hard. For the first time ever, I no longer felt like a “genuine believer.”

Chebon kept going. “Nevertheless, believers or not, all humans keep breaking the Exalted One’s heart by acting contrary to his loving ways.”

I was still far from coming to terms with any of this when, though I suspect I was still physically present in the forest, I was somehow mentally transported back to the endless palace. How this happened defies explanation. It was not a memory, nor imagination, and it seemed as real as if I were physically there.

Though shocked beyond words, I was nonetheless relieved, as it seemed I was being given another chance. There was no time to bask in that, however. A ‘sparkler’ hit and instantly I was sent hurtling back to the chaos of being over my head; swapped by a torrent of pleasures beyond human ability to endure. It felt as if I would explode with ecstasy. “God, help me!” I cried, almost in terror.

The palatial throng kept celebrating with wild gymnastics as though I did not exist.

Everything in the palace seemed the same as before, except for me. Now that I had at least a slight conception of my depravity, I felt as out of place in that sacred palace as someone covered with the most repulsive filth being draped with exquisite million dollar clothes. “I don’t deserve this!” I screamed in horror.

I sensed, in the perfection of the sensations coursing through my body, a presence so mortifyingly holy that never before had I felt such shame. It was like the most powerful searchlight illuminating the dark corners of my life and exposing hideous filth I had never known was there. For me to be enjoying otherworldly pleasures felt as wrong as a sadistic torturer being honored above Mother Teresa; the most disgusting coward being ticker-taped as a hero; the laziest fool being rewarded with endless success; the stingiest, most selfish person being lauded as the greatest philanthropist.

Somehow words were fired into my brain: It isn’t right to give what is holy to dogs! Suddenly, it felt as if those words encapsulated a fundamental law of the universe; a basic principle upon which the entire fabric of creation was built. It seemed breaking this law would threaten the continued existence of everything. It felt as though the holy and the profane were such opposites that if, at any point in the universe, they were to touch, it would ignite a chain reaction so explosive that everything in every world would disintegrate. But for me to be delirious with pleasure made it seem worth the gravest of risks. I wanted to flee but I wanted to stay, even if it killed me and destroyed the entire cosmos as well. How depraved is that!

I was a stray mongrel, a flea-infested mutt, muddying the snow-white carpet of heaven. I knew I should slink away in utter humiliation. Instead, I mustered all my strength and determined to gorge myself in pleasures I didn’t deserve. “God, have mercy,” I screamed.

Another celestial ‘sparkler’ hit me. This one was vaguely reminiscent of luxuriating in the best warm shower you could ever imagine, only it made me tingle with joy in ways I have never known. Then followed one that felt more like the softest feathers but was delighting me far beyond what a million feathers could ever do. Another hit. This one reminded me of warm snowflakes, but left all earthly comparison far behind.

Nothing in me is Christlike, came the thought. I must back off immediately or I’ll fry like a single volt motor on a ten thousand volt power line. Another ‘sparkler’ hit. Would it kill me?

Everything went black.