Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (95 page)

fullness of the eternal gospel as proclaimed to those former inhabitants by the Saviour ... After these pronouncements I saw the light in the room slowly shrinking around the man who had spoken to me, and this continued until the room was dark again, except around him. Then I could suddenly see into heaven as if through a shaft of light and the visitor rose up until he disappeared entirely and the room was once more as dark as before the vision of heavenly light ...

How does the vision in this report differ from the visions approved by the Roman Catholic Church?

Joseph Smith had more visions, in which he was shown the gold plates, the text of which he transcribed. In this way the Mormon Bible The Book of Mormon came into being in 1830. In 1848 the Christian Mormon community settled by the Salt Lake of Utah, U.S.A ... after lengthy wanderings in the desert, and founded the Mormon State of Utah with the flourishing settlement of Salt Lake City as its centre. Today the Mormon Church has over a million and a half members, who are scattered all over the world. Mormons really do live according to their Christian laws: they are more than a sect that could be dismissed as a quantite negligeable.

Who on earth can credibly explain the 'miracle' experienced by Joseph Smith except as an 'inspiration', i.e. a vision? Neither the F.B.I, nor a smart private eye knew the place on the unknown hill where Smith was to find the gold plates containing the Book of Mormon. No archaeologist had ever dug there. The vision led Smith to the hidden treasure, on the contents of which he was to base his religion.

No one knew about it, no one had been there before him so no one could have led the seventeen-year-old there telepathically. However it is logical that someone somewhere did know about this hiding place, indeed must have put the plates there. As this great unknown was not a contemporary of Smith, the impulse to search in this spot must inevitably - how else? - have come from people in the know outside our planet, people who at some point in time unknown to us had sojourned on the earth. For those who emitted the energy for the Smith vision must also have been on the hill at some time. Even they can only induce what they know, and they know more about our race and hidden knowledge than we have been able to discover so far. Smith was an instrument of the extraterrestrials. I should be genuinely grate-ful for any other convincing explanation of this phenomenon.

The Book of Mormon, which originated from these visions, contains such a wealth of historical events, with facts, names and geographical data, that it could not have formed part of the knowledge of a seventeen-year-old boy.

As with all visions, there was 'something' here. This 'something' needs investigation. It was definitely not a demonstration by the powers of hell, because the results were positive. That would be, to follow the Church Fathers, a con-tram tontrariis (fighting opposites with opposites).

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On 2nd April, 1968 passers-by observed figures like white doves, which had fluid outlines and slowly met in a mist, above the domes of the old Coptic church in the Cairo suburb of Zeitun. In a ghostlike metamorphosis the mist assumed the aspect of a human figure. It was so radiant that the spectators