The Man Upstairs

When I was a child going to Sunday School I used to listen to the Old Testament stories about people having conversations with God. And it occurred to me that it was strange that we never hear about God talking to anybody in contemporary times.

I think I even asked the question but never received a satisfactory answer. If God was hanging around in Old Testament times, and dealing with people’s lives, what happened that caused God to go up in the clouds and never appear again? Was it the coming of Jesus and the fact that the Romans killed him? Was God so pissed about that He stopped hanging out with humans?

I think one Bible scholar tried to explain it to me once. He said God was present for the Hebrew people because they were his chosen people. I have since decided that story was a crock since the Jews are still around, many still practice their religion the way they always did, and the story that they are God’s “chosen” has always been spread around.

So if we want to believe the Old Testament stories, Adam and Eve definitely saw and talked with God. Genesis 18 says Yahweh, an ancient Hebrew name for God, visited Abraham. The Book of Isaiah 6:1-3 tells us Isaiah saw God.

Exodus 24:9-11 says Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu plus the 70 elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Job 42:5 tells us that Job saw God.

So if all these people were actually looking at and visiting the Creator, how do we explain the weird story in Exodus 33:23 where Moses was denied a request to look upon the face of God, but instead, was privileged to view only God’s “backside.” And does that mean God mooned Moses? What part of God’s backside did Moses see?

God allegedly explained to Moses: “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

Now a statement like this, after so many of the old saints and elders of the Hebrew people, including Moses, had already had personal visions of God, sounds ominous. Had something changed in God’s relationship with humanity?

As far as talking to God, we have all read those stories about crazed folk who murdered people, killed their children and did other inhuman things because God told them to. As a news reporter, I met people who claim to have talked with God, Jesus or Mary. These weren’t killers, but people who claimed to have received prophetic messages. As far as I know, none of their prophecies ever came to pass. They were just nutty people with visions.

While she lived, my late wife Doris used to talk to an entity that called himself The Abba Father. This entity gave us warnings about future events that did happen. He also predicted my wife’s death several months before it happened. The Abba Father never claimed to be God or a messenger from God. He said he was one of the Elders who looked down upon the affairs of humans. Was he a god-like figure?

Indeed, the Moses story leaves me completely perplexed. Like the burning bush affair, I suspect it also may have been a vision brought on by a THC experience.

Of course the Bible theologians have found a solution to this obvious contradiction in Bible stories. Since Christians believe in a Trinity . . . that God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit all at the same time, it was possible for people to look upon Jesus and live. Moses was attempting to go farther and look upon the Father.