Astronomy and Politics Through the Lens of Epistemology
How do We Know What We Know?
What is Our Method of Evaluating Truth?

I am a life long amateur astronomer and see the stars and heavens as another testament to God’s glory (Psalms 19:1-6).  So one night I had a couple of Baptist friends over to view through a telescope.  Since I had a telescope permanently mounted on my property with a modest “deep sky” capability, we concentrated on globular clusters, nebulae and galaxies but did very little planet observing.  The moon, whose light drowned out all those faint galaxies and nebulae, rose somewhere between 1-2 am.  So my two Baptist guests and I went to bed around that time, late and exhausted in my 50 foot long mobile home which had a bedroom on either end. 

One of the problems that I used to have in sleep was somehow being caught in that transition between sleep and consciousness with an overpowering sensation of fear.  My normal routine for dealing with this problem, at the time, was to struggle back into a conscious state, go to the fridge for a glass of milk and go back to sleep.  But even though I had two guests at the other end of the trailer, this night would be completely different.

I had such an attack of fear that night and forced myself awake around 4 am.  I sat up as usual but because I had just purchased an early, frame-less water bed, I remember the bouncing Jello-like effect from sitting up.  When I finally calmed down, I wiped the sleep from my eyes and finally opened them and I saw a dark hooded figure standing at the door.  It looked like one of those depictions you see in older books of the angel of death that typically is holding a scythe.  But this figure had no scythe.

My first realization was that I had struggled to awaken myself to something far worse than my subconscious dream state.  The sheer terror was utterly overwhelming!  Naturally, I tried to call for help from my guests at the other end of the trailer.  But the harder I tried to cry out, the more I realized that I was so paralyzed with fear I could not vocalize the smallest sound. 

Yet, in the in the midst of all this fear, I was suddenly able to do something which I have rarely repeated. I was able to multi-task during the most stressful experience in my memory, before or since.  I was able to process and remember the passage “whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's shall save it”.  My first attempt at applying this principle and giving up my life was to lie back down in my water filled mattress on the floor and look at the ceiling so as to relax enough to call out to my guests.

That half-hearted application of this scripture was dashed when the hooded figure came over and stood at the head of my bed and stared straight down at me; my eye balls to its faceless hood.  That staring contest seemed to go on for some time and my heart was pounding so hard that I could feel the resulting wave motion in the frame-less water bed mattress.  At that point I was likely hyper-ventalating!

Then, I realized that I had omitted the study’s principle of surrendering all and I thought, here goes God.  At this point, I knew that I had to "go for broke" or the whole attempt to give up my life was going to totally collapse and amount to nothing! Though I still could not get a word out, in my mind I said to the figure, “OK, go ahead and kill me or whatever.  But if you do, afterward you will have to deal with the creator of the universe!”  The second I thought that, all the fear that had paralyzed me suddenly ceased, just as if it had been cut off by a dropping guillotine blade. 

Just as suddenly, the hooded figure spun around while I leapt from my bed and pursued it down the hall while yelling at my friends at the top of my lungs!  When I got to the living room I lost sight of the figure, but I could see my friends light go on and bare feet jumping out of their beds and I thought……......bathroom!  I turned the light on in that room and saw nothing; there was no way for anyone to have escaped through the small louvered window.  Then we all grabbed our flashlights and rushed outside in various degrees of undress to search for the intruder.  It struck me at the time, how in an instant our roles were reversed where I became the predator and the hooded figure became my prey.  Since my trailer was isolated atop a 60 foot hill, I knew we could hear whatever it was scrambling down the rocky hill in the dark.  But as we circled the small perimeter of the property atop the hill, we neither saw nor heard anything.

When I got back to the trailer, I sat there for I don’t know how long contemplating the question of WHY and tried to absorb everything that happened to me that night.  Yet immediately afterward, the experience was utterly exhausting both spiritually and physically in ways I cannot describe even today.  At that moment, I remember praying, “God, I thought that my mind would blow a gasket, so, WHY did I need to go through that traumatic experience”??  I further thought to myself that I needed those seemingly futile events of that night like a hole in my head!

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Although, that was my reaction in my state of exhaustion at the time, I can testify now that nothing else could have taught me the real power of the Messiah’s concept of giving up my life in order to save it.  What I learned in an instant was the awesome power I had once I had given up control and was willing to allow my death to transpire if necessary.  The issue all along was in truly giving up control of my self-defense.  The most interesting aspect of the experience for me was the fact that God would not release me from the fear as long as I believed I had any degree of control.  My first attempt at control by depending on and alerting my friends was totally ineffective.  My plan to calm down and just meditate on trusting God was smashed when the figure came to the head of my bed. All my attempts to protect myself through reasoning with scripture were utterly inadequate failures.  Only when I was willing to give up my life and give up total control to Elohim, was I totally released from that fear.

Since learning that lesson several decades ago, I have only had one single night since where fear of the “dark side” has interrupted my state of sleep.  On that single night some 4 years ago, I awoke, screamed “get out of here in the name of Jesus Christ”, and then thought I should get up to check the door locks.   That was the last thought I remember before falling back to sleep.  This time no trip to the refrigerator for milk was necessary since my experience years before.  It was almost funny that when I awoke totally rested the next morning, I noticed as I left the house that I had indeed left the door unlocked that night, yet I was protected!  It was one of those, "hey remember that...ah ha moment".

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I now believe that experience was absolutely necessary for the transformation that allowed the Holy Spirit to transfer every fiber of my being to His control via the Lordship of Christ.  That encounter left me with no doubt, that the Holy Spirit was right there with me tutoring me on how to respond. For those reasons, the exact nature of the hooded figure, whether demonic, extended dream state, or hallucination was and is irrelevant to me.  The question of WHY, as well, has been totally overshadowed by the lessons learned like, the power of “giving up my life in order to save it”.  Many may object to such a testimony citing the passage that “perfect love casts out fear”.  I would contend my experience is just an example of HOW God casts out fear.  Now I would like to report that after that experience, I never again had any such issues with fear of any kind.  Certainly that would be mostly true regarding any perceived demonic confrontation.  But the idea that fear in any form was never something I had to deal with afterward is not true.   There are many other distantly related areas in my Christian walk where fear has taken hold in various other contexts and spiritual issues.  At 73, I am sobered by the hymn, What a friend we have in Jesus", especially the line, "O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer".

Yet that first dramatic encounter was kind of a personal preview or warning of things to come.  Each time in my life that I have experienced a victory where fear was in any way involved, I remember that night and rejoice YES, He did it again!!

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