ity of this
chapter. Several other aspects are worth pondering. The whole chapter
has a well-worn feeling, as though the author had told and re-told it
many times. It reads like a deposition, taken down by a police
officer, after the witness, who prides himself on truthfulness, has
told the story over and over to his incredulous friends. It has a
certain poetic beauty. It has the style of one who is telling you the
truth, no matter whether you are going to believe it or not. It is
the presentation of a tableau that makes no sense to the man who
witnessed it, or to those to whom he is describing it.

The product of a man's imagination is tied to his own experience, his
own time. A wonderful tale of the supernatural may sound very
imaginative to the contemporary of the teller, but it will date itself
to a later generation. The lives of the Greek gods are related to the
lives of the early Greeks. An imaginative science-fiction writer such
as Jules Verne is limited in the same way. As good as he was,
experience has set an outer limit to his imagination. Ezekiel's tale
is not in this class. To his contemporaries, it was out of step with
reality. To us it is real enough, but out of step with time. The most
credible explanation is that it really happened.

* * * * *

Perhaps there are some points of my interpretation that you do not
agree with, but as a whole the story does hang together rather well.
If you have the feeling that it would be easy to fit the words around
an entirely different set of circumstances, I suggest that you try.

It is interesting to know that some years ago a verbal battle raged in
theological circles as to whether Ezekiel wrote the Book of Ezekiel.
One school of thought held that he did, while the other school held
that the first chapter was a "forgery," written in the third century
before Christ, and tacked on as a sort of "leader" to Ezekiel's book.
For our purposes it cannot be a forgery. It makes little difference
how long ago it was written, so long as it was not since World War II!

Suppose Ezekiel or some ancient man actually saw what I have proposed.
What are the possible explanations? Is it possible that some ancient
race, unknown to us, could have developed such equipment? It is not
likely. During the last one hundred years we have been prodding about
in the earth and finding so many ancient records that someone else
besides Ezekiel would certainly have le