OV’s Last Visit: His Final Take on Jesus and Christianity
by Erv Taylor | 16 November 2018
Author’s Note: Readers may recall that OV (“Our Visitor”) is from a planet circling the nearest star to Earth, other than our sun. We call his star Proxima Centauri. It is about four light years away. That means that traveling at the speed of light (which obviously is impossible for us), it would take about four Earth years to travel one way. However, OV uses one or more “worm holes” to travel back and forth, usually in less than seven Earth days. One of his trips took only a little over three Earth days. For more background information on OV and my previous interactions with him, please refer to the End Note.
Readers will please remember that I’m just reporting what OV said to me during his last visit. I may or may not agree with some of his conclusions.
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OT finally arrived after, what for him was an unusually long travel period which he said was almost one Earth week. The first thing he said to me this time was that he is getting too old for inter-solar system travel.
“This trip,” he said, “took three transfers between what you call ‘worm holes’ to get from my home planet to your solar system and planet.” (When he originally used the “worm holes” phase, I didn’t understand before he explained what he meant, and still don’t. He said he used that term because someone else on his planet monitoring Earth broadcasts said that is what Earth people seemed to have named the “seams” in space/time. (I had just read of some recent ideas expressed by physicists on planet Earth which suggested something that sounds a lot like what OV described might, at least in theory, be possible far in the future if Earth science could figure out how to generate a lot of energy to operate it.)
OV continued: “The transfers between the worm holes and having to run at light speed between them is relatively slow, so getting here took me seven of your days. I hope when I return there are better connections.”
“However,” he continued, “the long trip gave me a chance to read some of the materials I had collected and that you had given me earlier.”
“Also, back home, I was able to do a translation of some of these materials into one of our languages and showed the translated text to a . . . ,” he hesitated. “We call him what, in English, you might call an ‘Ancient One.’ He is one of the best known individuals on our planet who can read several extinct written languages from my planet and other planets belonging to our star system which were being used multiple tens of millennia ago in Earth years. They are the basis on which several very senior ‘Ancient Ones’ have been able to reconstruct the history of our planet and other star system planets.”
I asked him, “How old is old?” He had earlier told me that the average age on his planet is about 550 Earth years.
“I think I once calculated that this particular Ancient One is about 725 years Earth years old,” he said.
“What did one of your Ancient Ones think about some of the materials I had given you about Christianity and Jesus?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “when one of them had finished reading that material in some detail, he told me that, at least some of the information about Jesus reminded him of an individual who had lived on our planet a very long time ago…”
With regard to the materials that I had given him, OV said that several of these Ancient Ones had reacted the same way that he had.
He continued: “He read the document you told me was called the ‘New Testament.’ He said that both he and the ‘Ancient Ones’ offered the opinion that the information about Jesus and that about a person called Paul in your ‘New Testament’ does not compute. And as far as what exactly ‘Christianity’ was all about in terms of Jesus’ statements, they were very puzzled.” OV had told them that he had agreed with them and would ask me when he returned for his last visit to Earth.
I asked him, “How long ago did your Ancient One say someone like Jesus had lived on your planet and some other planets in your star system?” “Let’s see,” he said. “I would have to figure this out in your years,” and he pulled out his small device and started entering something and then finally pushed a place on the device and waited until I heard a ding-like sound. He looked at it. “OK,” he said, “that works out to about 65,000 of your Earth years.” (I had forgotten to mention in my previous reports that when OV talked to me previously he had to, from time to time, pull out from a pack he carries a small device to allow him to access a technology in his ship that contains a large collection of data of various types and can calculate things which are, even for him, too complicated to work out in his head.)
I said, “Wow, that’s a long time ago!” He looked startled. “No, not really; we have records of sorts going back several . . .,” again he stopped and pushed something on his device, and then a “ding” and he continued, “about 200,000 of your years.”
“I’m impressed,” I said. OV was still looking at his device, “Well, I see that some people of one of your religions believe that the entire universe, or at least your solar system or planet, is only 6,000 to 10,000 of your years old, and some believe that there were no living creatures any place on your planet before 10,000 of your years ago. Is that right?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I’m afraid that is true.”
“I hope none of your Christians believe that.” OV commented, while continuing to look again at his device.
“Well, to be truthful,” I said, “a small number of certain brands of Christians do believe that.”
He said something that sounded like “O Dear” and then, “I was told by another ‘Ancient One’ that he was under the impression that on this planet there are those looking like you, but apparently they . . . .” He stopped again, punching something into his device, and then used a word that he said translates something like “some of these inhabitants of your planet have every . . . .” He stopped again and continued to look at his device and then continued . . . “disordered brains. I hope I am not insulting anyone,” he said.
“No,” I said, “that might be very true.”
“So,” he continued, changing the subject, “I think you know that I can’t stay very long and have several things I need to make sure I understand before heading back. There are several of my colleagues who turn out to be interested in your planet and several other planets in your system — or rather, I should say moons of other planets in your system. I think it is because we don’t have much information about the kinds of advanced life forms in your solar system in our reference sources since conscious beings of this planet and other places in this star system are . . . under-evolved beings.” He stopped and again quickly said, “I hope I am not insulting anyone.” He admitted that in his rush to learn English, he had not been able to learn all of the things one is not supposed to say to Earth inhabitants.
In one of his earlier trips, he asked if I knew that our solar system was one of the few star systems that did not have light speed or worm hole technology? He mentioned that there is an ancient law that OV’s planet can’t provide any technologies to any other star system because it might produce some type of social breakdown. Apparently that is what had happened a long time ago. So he said that most star systems will not do it anymore. That is also the reason, he said, that transport vehicles from his and local star systems do not usually travel to Earth’s star system and the region around it in this little piece of this galaxy. OV once said that there is kind of an understanding that they don’t want to disturb beings in our solar system until some of the conscious life forms catch up with the rest of the star systems in this small part of our galaxy.
Continuing, OV then slowly added, “It’s nothing personal. It’s for your own good” while looking at some notes on his device, and then changed the subject again: “I would appreciate some additional information about Jesus and your Christianity that we are having a difficult time understanding.”
“Certainly,” I said. “I will do my best.”
He began by telling me that he needed to check on one impression based on reading records of Jesus’ statements in the four different sources that he had learned in English are called the “gospels,” (I had explained to him that “gospel” meant “good news.”) in contrast to those statements based on letters written by what is stated to have been an individual named Paul. All of these records are about 2000 Earth years old which is not a lot of time from OV’s perspective.
First, he said, “One gets very different impressions about what Jesus was about from three of what you call gospels compared with the fourth one and then you have Paul writing stuff that doesn’t seem to be talking about the same person. Is that right?”
I said, “Well, different Christians interpret what these records say about Jesus in very different ways.”
He immediately came back with, “Speaking of Christians, I’m still unclear what does the person ‘Christ’ have to do with ‘Jesus.’ Your Paul person doesn’t talk much about Jesus, but he talks a lot about this ‘Christ.’”
“That’s complicated,” I said. “Not everyone agrees about how to explain it. One view is that there is absolutely no difference between what the gospels and Paul say about Jesus.”
“Really?” OV said. He was looking at his device and then asked, “Are those the people called Fundas . . . Fundamental . . . O, I see,” he said slowly. And then “Ah . . . Fundamentalists?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s one of the many types of Christians.”
I continued, “That’s the same group that believes that life has been on earth not more than 6,000 or 10,000 of your years – if you can believe that.”
He responded, “They seem to be a really sad group. You must kind of feel sorry for them.”
“Well,” I said, “yes, many of us feel sorry for them. But you can’t reason with them and many other Christians think that they have accepted some very strange ideas.”
“So,” he asked, “what is the actual consensus about the disagreements among Christians about what the various historical sources say that Jesus was teaching?”
“Actually,” I said, “as I ready mentioned, there is no consensus. Different Christians have very different views.”
“Interesting. Why all of the differences of opinions? What is your view?” he asked.
“Well, to be honest,” I began, “you may find this strange, but trying to figure what really happened 2000 Earth years ago from a rather jumbled set of records, appears, at least to many Earthers, to be very difficult.”
“To you, 2000 of your years might seem a long time ago,” OV responded, “but to us, that is not a long time ago. Would you like to know what a discussion among some of us back on my home planet has come up with?”
I eagerly said, “Yes, of course.”
“Well, first of all,” he began, “Paul was certainly a smart man and probably well-meaning. Also, he was well-educated by the standards of his time, but he really came up with a very different take on Jesus from what we read about Jesus in at least three of your gospels, as you call them. You told us that Paul never knew Jesus while he was living. He said he had a vision in which Jesus appeared to him.”
I said, “Yes, that’s correct.”
“Well,” OV continued, “that makes sense. Paul was a visionary type. That may explain a lot.”
“It seems to us,” OV said, “that Paul turned the Jesus movement which was concerned primarily with improving human relations into a set of cultic understandings. He fostered the elaboration of a lot of esoteric ideas that reconfigured Jesus into a God-like figure with all kinds of magical capabilities. Most of all, he created an organized system of thought about Jesus and you call that Christianity.
“But we concluded that it was not just Paul,” he continued. “The writers of the gospels told stories that said that Jesus was able on one occasion to have turned water into wine, brought dead people back to life, and could walk on water. After a while, the number of magical stories about Jesus overshadowed what he actually had said to the point that it becomes almost impossible to separate what came from Jesus and what developed by way of rumors that got written down.”
“By the way,” I said, “you asked about from where the terms ‘Christ’ and ‘Christianity’ came from, right?”
OV responded. “Our records are very vague.”
I knew that I had to go slow when I was answering his more complex questions, because he had to get translations of new English Earth words that were not already in his device.
“Well,” I began, “Jesus, of course, was a Jew, and apparently a very devout one, who really did not take kindly to what some of the Jewish religious authorities of his time were doing. And he really did not like how the poor and powerless of his time were being treated. He constantly stressed that how we treat others is the most important virtue.
“Anyway, the Jews over their ancient history of more than 1,000 Earth years – more like 1,500 years – had moved into a bad area from a defensive point of view. They said that their Deity had said that he was giving them this land. If that is so, their Deity had not done them any favors.
“They were located right in the middle of a region that was constantly fought over by various strong military powers to the south and north. As a consequence, the Jews were often caught in the middle of these conflicts. They also had neighbors with whom they did not have good relationships. There was a lot of fighting that went on around and against the Jews by their local enemies, with the Jews retaliating, and around and around it went, generation after generation. They had this story that their Deity had told them to slaughter everyone that lived on the land they wanted. That story did not go over very well with locals in the neighborhood.”
OV interrupted, “This is interesting, but the question is why does Paul constantly refer to ‘Christ,’ while ‘Jesus’ is very rarely mentioned.”
“I’m getting to that,” I said. “The explanation has a long back story.”
I continued, “Every once in a while, a strong, sometimes charismatic type of man would emerge as a military leader among the Jews. It was important that this individual receive supernatural sanction from the Hebrew Deity and thus some Hebrew priest appointed one of these strong men from time to time as the ‘savior’ of the Jews. They physically ‘anointed’ him and this ritual conferred on him his title, which was something like an ‘Anointed One.’ The Hebrew word for that was Messiah.”
“OK,” said OV. “I got it.”
I continued, “We are finally coming to the part about where Paul got the word he used a lot, ‘Christ,’ and therefore the name of the religion he created: ‘Christianity.’ It turns out that a direct translation of Messiah in Hebrew is Christos in Greek. You know that Greek was the language in which Paul and all of the gospel writers –whoever they were – composed their works. This is in contrast to the language that Jesus spoke on a day-to-day basis. The language he generally used is called Aramaic. However, there is some evidence that he might have been able to speak the common form of Greek spoken in the region where he grew up, which was in an area with a number of Greek-speaking towns.”
“I see,” said OV. “I wonder why I had never picked up on that,” pecking away on his device.
“Anyway,” I continued, “Paul uses the term Christos to refer to Jesus. However, many of our scholars argue about how much of the real, historical Jesus Paul actually incorporated into what really is Paul’s complicated theological system.”
OV said, “Stop just a moment, while I catch up,” and he continued to peck at his device. Finally, he said, “OK, let’s . . . ,” then he stopped and said, “Wait a minute, I’m not getting a translation for ‘theological system.’ What’s a ‘theological system?’”
I had to think for a moment. Then I said, slowly at first, “Well, perhaps the simplest way to put it is that, among educated Christians, it usually means a somewhat coordinated set of what are usually complex sets of ideas defining who God is and how he works.” OV started entering codes and then stopped and slowly said, “ . . . who God is . . . . and how he . . . works.” “Yes,” I said.
He looked up. “You used the term God. You had always before used the term Deity, singular and plural. What’s the difference?”
I realized that I had not been clear to OV about the Deity/God thing on Earth, at least in English, at least in standard Christianity.
“Sorry,” I said. “That is confusing. The reason is because I’m trying to explain the English word theological, as in theological system. The word comes from an ancient language on Earth called Latin. A form of Latin is still spoken in some religious services today. ‘Theos’ in Latin is usually translated into English as ‘God.’ The extension -logos in this context usually means ‘study of.’ And thus theological or theology would literally mean ‘the study of God.’”
“Really,” OV said. “How interesting.” He said “interesting” very slowly. Then he paused. You could kind of see the lights flashing in his head. The place on his mask where the eyes should be, kind of twinkled. After a moment, he asked, “The study of which God?”
Every once in a while, when I answered one of OV’s questions and then he stopped, I thought I could see his nose twitching. or at least where a nose should be, since I really couldn’t see his actual face which was under a breathing mask of sorts.
OV was no dummy. In fact, he was one of the smartest persons I ever knew. Nothing got by him. He was very fast getting something once the English word had been interpreted for him on his hand device. He understood common spoken English, but he still had to look up a number of words. He told me he had learned to communicate in English from scratch in nine months of on-and-off self-instruction. It had to be self-instruction because no one spoke or read any Earth language on any planet in his star system.
As I have already said, OV learned by listening to radio and watching TV for about two Earth hours a day. With so little exposure, his command of English vocabulary words was amazing. He mentioned that he figured out the meanings of a number of English words by context and how they were used in different expressions.
I then remembered that OV had told me that no Earth language was anything like the languages used on planets in his star system. By the way, I keep saying “he” and “him.” The fact is that I was never sure what to call him exactly. He was clear when he told me that he was not a “he” or “she” or “it” in Earth terms. The beings in his star system did not have genders in that way. I really didn’t want to probe how reproduction on their planet worked. I didn’t ask, and he didn’t volunteer that information. So I just decided to call him a “he” for the purpose of recording my information about him.
I was careful in answering OV’s question about “which God?” I began, “As I think you know, Christianity is supposed to be a monotheistic religion. You know that monotheistic comes from Latin again, mono– means ‘one’ and –theos means ‘God,’ and so it means a belief that there is only one Deity. English has borrowed a lot of words from Latin.”
“Right,” OV responded slowly and then he stopped. “But, I have a note that says that Christianity has three Gods. Is that right? That is one thing I’ve been asked to try specifically to clarify.”
Again I said, “That is very complicated. At least, I think it is complicated and many people have tried to figure out exactly how the idea got started. The problem has been talked about almost from the beginning of Christianity. How can you say you are ‘monotheistic’ and have three gods? The multiple gods thing was quite common in the world in which Christianity arose and for millennia of earth years before. One issue that complicated things for Christianity was the idea that Jesus was part of what was called the ‘Godhead.’”
“Godhead?” OV echoed. “What’s that?”
I responded, “I’ve been told that’s how many parts of Christianity get round the ‘Three-Gods-Are-Really-One-God’ problems.”
“By inventing a new word?” OV asked.
“Well,” I said, “It a little more complicated than that.”
Then OV said, still looking at his device. “OK, I see. That notation is here in our records under ‘Trinity.’ But when we looked up this entry, it was blank. No one knew what that meant. How do you use the term ‘Godhead’?”
I responded. “Ah, well, in the eyes of some, not very well. However, in others, it became a centerpiece of their understanding of Christianity. It obviously created a great gulf between the Jews and Christians, since, to the Jews, such a belief is simply totally and completely unacceptable; in fact, it was rank blasphemy of the first order. It also made defending Christianity as monotheistic very difficult.”
OV then commented: “But you said, ‘three in one,’ right? Weren’t two Gods enough?”
I responded, “Again, the idea of Godhead also helped facilitated the idea that there was some sort of ‘Spirit’ God or ‘Holy Spirit’ that existed in addition to the other two Gods of the Godhead.”
“Really?” OV said. “This part we did not have in any record.”
I continued, “That additional idea just made even more problematic developing a logical argument that the purported religion of Jesus was monotheistic. I sure you would not be surprised to know that the evolution of the idea of the Christian Trinity has a long and sometimes bloody history.”
“Bloody history?” OV asked.
“Regretfully,” I said. “Sometimes physical clashes over how to express the idea of how to talk abut the different parts of the Trinity resulted in people being injured and even some killed.”
“How interesting,” OV muttered. “We really never imagined,” again pecking away at his device.
So, he said, sounding as if he was finishing up organizing his notes, “How would you summarize the relationship between the teachings of the historic Jesus and the ‘Christianity’ developed by Paul of Tarsus? When we started talking about this back on my home planet, as best as we could make out, the Christianity that we know now is actually what we should call ‘Pauline Christianity.’”
I responded with, “Jesus perhaps would never have recognized Paul’s version as reflecting the core of his teachings. There were initially Jesus’ followers outside of the orbit of those who followed Paul. These other versions of Jesus’ believers either died out, or were pushed to the margins of the large region where the then-Western world was centered.”
“Yes,” OV said, “I’ve read about that. Most of that region at that time was under the ‘Omens,’ right?” OV asked.
“I think you mean ‘Romans,” I responded. OV looked down at his device. “Romans,” he muttered. “Someone made an error in entering data. I will make a note and make a change in the records when I get back home.”
“In any event,” I concluded, “after only perhaps 300 or 400 years, the type of Christianity which Paul had created had become so-called ‘regular’ or ‘orthodox’ Christianity. That means the ‘right’ Christianity.”
OV quickly said, “As opposed to the ‘wrong’ Christianity?”
I said, “Well, yes, that’s what they thought. As Pauline Christianity evolved and became dominant, there came to be many what the people in charge said were ‘wrong’ Christianities. They called them heretical ”
“Heretical Christianities,” OV echoed. “Got to get that down. I don’t think we have that expression.”
At this time in our conversation – a very short time, by earlier standards, which felt like we had just started talking, he again glanced at his hand-held device and said something like, “Oh, Oh.” Then he started punching it, and then waited for the “beep.” Then finally, “I have problems which are rapidly getting worse. My breathing system is beginning to fail. Apparently, your atmosphere is even more toxic than we calculated back home. I’m sorry, I can’t continue any longer. I must leave immediately.”
He immediately started to walk to his transport. (Well, he never “walked.” He kind of glided. It was actually quite spooky.) Anyway, as he was preparing to get back into his transport vehicle, I recalled that during a couple of his earlier visits, I had asked him how he looked without his protective gear and breathing unit. He was kind of hesitant to answer me. He would only say, “Well, we look very different from you,” and then changed the subject.
I also ask what kind of language he spoke. He had to think hard about answering that question, because he said that the principles on which his group communicates are very different from our way. Whenever he spoke, I always had the sense that what I heard was being produced by some type of sound conversion technology, because he talked in a kind of monotone voice and there was a slight delay in his responses. I asked him once what he sounded like on his own planet. He had to think about that and then, he touched something on his suit, and what sounded like a series of very high and low tones came out, and then some very odd-sounding . . . as best as I could figure, like some of our musical sounds, but not like any specific music. Then he switched it off and ask: “Well ?” I responded with “That’s your language?” He said, “That’s as close as I can do at the . . . .” then, the musical sounds came back, and he had to punch additional buttons or sensors on his device again, and then the beep, and then he continued, “ . . . frequencies of air movement on this planet that will register with you. But our speech does not need our atmosphere to produce it; but how it works is very complicated.” “Oh, well,” I said, “it’s more than any Earth type can understand, right?” I expected him to be a tad diplomatic, but instead he said, “Yes, that is true.”
With regard to what he “really” looked like, I asked him if it would be possible for him to show me at least what the appearance of his skin was like, because he once said in passing that he really has a different type of covering on his body and his grasping appendages look very different from ours.
So I asked, “You will not be coming back. Could you please let me see at least what your surface skin looks like.” I could tell that he was very hesitant. He once told me that he really doesn’t have any “skin” such as Earth humans do, but then he finally said, “O.K., just for you.”
Then he indicated that I should move back some distance. “Please shield your eyes,” he said.
Then he pushed something on his suit and I heard a slight hum and then − all of a sudden − this intense pulsating glow came from him from what I recalled later was a very small spot on what I took to be some type of appendage. Suddenly, I couldn’t see anything because of the bright light and I had to turn away from the source of that light. I really had not seen anything on the surface of this “arm.” Then I heard another hum and the light stopped.
Then he said, “Now you know why I was hesitant to show you. You must be protected from what I really look like when I’m here. I wear protective gear not just to protect me, but also to protect you. On your type of planet, we emit not only what you call intense ‘light’ but also what you call very intensive ‘radiation’ that would be very hurtful to you if you were exposed to it for more than a few of your seconds even if I apply our most advanced way of shielding the radiation coming out. If I didn’t, I am afraid that it be very lethal to your type of being which is what you call carbon-based.”
In any event, I once said, “So you are not carbon-based.” “Oh, no, no, no,” he answered. “We are made of a very different material. I think I would have a hard time explaining it to you. Anyway, sorry to be so abrupt, I must get away, my breathing unit is flashing a danger signal.”
We shook hands for the first and last time. He had learned that here. But he said he could not do that before because he said that his ability to control the temperature and radiation coming from his suit had some problems and he did not want to get too close to me. This time he said he had got that fixed, and it should be all right.
He asked me to stand some distance from his ship, which when he approached it suddenly seemed to get a lot larger than before. I thought that I should have asked him if it had some type of cloaking technology as is portrayed on our science fiction TV dramas.
When he arrived near to the ship, a kind of door thing folded out, he walked up the ramp (I should have said that he kind of floated up the ramp). He turned around and raised something that I could not see very well and I raised my hand. He then waved what I assumed was some kind of grasping arm. I waved. He was standing in the doorway when it slowly folded closed.
I heard a kind of blowing sound and what looked like some type of blue-gray smoke came out. I assumed that he was purging earth’s atmosphere from the ship. Then it appeared that the whole surface began to heat up, vapor came off the surface and a kind of cloud formed around the vehicle and then dissipated. As that cleared, there was a pulsing light on top of one end of the ship.
Then there was a kind of combination whine and hissing noise that increased in volume as the ship moved slowly up and then stopped. Then several projecting parts of it that had been extended–apparently some form of landing gear–were folded into the body. Some kind of what I assumed was a communication antenna array also folded into the top of the ship. Sliding panels folded out and then down, I assume sealing all of those areas, When it was in the air, it rocked a little, and, for the first time, I realized how large the ship really was.
Then there were a series of pulsating high-pitched sounds and then it moved slowly up on a slight angle, clearing the tree line. By this time, there were some pulsing lights moving rapidly around the ship. Then it suddenly accelerated very rapidly straight up and was out of sight within a few seconds, leaving a very thin trail of vapor. I read the next morning that some people had seen a large meteor traveling in a strange direction, going up, not down.
Thus ended my contact with OV from a planet circling the nearest star – next to our own sun − who had asked me about Christianity and Jesus on planet Earth.
PS: I just remembered that he indicated that he would leave a record of our conversation in the archives of his planet and that of other planets in his star system, suggesting that someone visit our planet in about 10,000 Earth years to see if there had been any improvement in some of the barbaric nature of some of earth’s practices – such as some nation-states’ not having free universal health coverage available for all of its citizens. The other suggested inquiry would look into whether or not Paul’s version of Christianity ‒ not what he had been able to sift out as the actual teachings of Jesus, for which he had great respect ‒ had progressed in 10,000 Earth years from what OV characterizes as Pauline Christianity’s somewhat “odd” and “sometimes incredible” views.
Ervin Taylor is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Past Director of the Radiocarbon Laboratory at the University of California, Riverside. He is also currently a Visiting Professor at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and Visiting Scientist at the Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine. He has served as the Executive Editor of Adventist Today.
End Note
Some may recall from earlier commentaries that OV had visited earth on several occasions (episode 1, episode 2, episode 3, episode 4) in search of information about Jesus of Nazareth and Christianity. One day he suddenly appeared and asked if I was the person that posted commentaries on what was called a “website.” I had to explain to him that this term had nothing to do with Earth spiders. When he first introduced himself, he was wearing clothing that while a little ill-fitting, made him look reasonably “normal.” After a couple of visits, he asked if he could dispense with what he called his costume in my house, and I said I didn’t mind. He prepared me by saying, please don’t be startled. He actually was wearing a very interesting cream-colored, metallic-looking garment with a hood that covered his head and a mask of sorts with sounds of breathing. It reminded me a little of me of what a “good” Darth Vader might look like.
Obviously, a reasonable person would have been very guarded. But he seemed to know a lot of what I had written. We began to talk and finally he opened up about who he was and why he was here. For some odd reason I believed him, rather than assuming that he had left a mental health institution without permission.
What finally clinched it was when he showed me his transport vehicle. We would call it a “spaceship.” Later when we had walked some distance from it, I turned around and from a distance it looked like an abandoned silo for storing grain on its side. That is how it was hidden in plain sight.
Why he picked me, I do not have a clue. He spoke excellent English and said he knew about the topic he wanted information on because he had decoded broadcast and television signals coming from earth containing references to both while he had been learning English. He had apparently learned a number of other Earth languages by that same process.
Regretfully, in light of the information given him back on his home planet after his last visit, he was told that that further contacts with earth’s atmosphere will have permanent serious effects on his health, even when he protects himself with a breathing apparatus and his metallic protective gear. I get the impression that our atmosphere has the same effect on him that exposure to sources of significant amounts of radiation would have on us. Thus this will be his last visit.
Since he is interested in Christianity, I had mentioned to him that organized segments of Christianity today are divided into a vast number of separate cults, sects, and denominations, many of which say that they are practicing the only “true” Christianity founded by the historic Jesus of Nazareth. OV seemed to be quite amused by this information.
