The Harvest

by John David Krygelski

  One of the uniformed officers trotted to the three, and one at a time wrote down what they said, quickly bringing the pocket-sized notepad up to Dexter. Looking at the list, Mills said, “Morality and Religion. Whose answer was that?” One of the three raised her hand. Mills recognized her as Megan Mislin who had been so prominent in the lecture. “Ms. Mislin, please step forward.”

  He glanced back down at the list and read aloud, “‘God and You.’ That was from…?” One of the two boys raised his hand. “Good guess but wrong. Please sit down.” Again he read from the notepad, “101 recipes for the perfect beer.” Laughter burst from the seated group, and Dexter looked up to see the remaining male student getting high-fives as he sat down, not waiting to be told.

  “Ms. Mislin, thank you for participating. Your tuition waiver will be entered into your account tomorrow. To everyone else, I also would like to thank you for participating. The University of Arizona believes in an environment where each of you feels comfortable expressing your strongly held opinions. Thank you for your time, and please continue with your demonstration.”

  Dexter handed the amplifier back to the campus officer and hopped down from the railing. Ryan, the TV reporter, was waiting, microphone in hand. “Professor Mills?”

  He stopped to address her, “Ms. Ryan. Journalism is not my field. However, I believe that your story is over there…,” pointing at the group of nine standing to the side and looking quite frustrated. He turned and walked away.

  Chapter Five

  Reese sat in a mid-sized break room down the hall from where he had interviewed Elohim. Seated at the table with him were Claire, Nicholas Reynolds, Craig McWilliams, and Preston Bennett, who was introduced only as being from the State Department. His book rested on the table in front of Claire. Reese sipped his coffee and stared at the book.

  “Well?” asked Bennett.

  Wearily, Reese spoke slowly, without raising his head. “If you are asking me if I am ready to declare that man God, the answer is ‘no.’ If you’re asking me if any part of the interview rules out that possibility, the answer is also ‘no.’”

  “How much time do you think it will take?”

  Raising his eyes until he was gazing directly at the diplomat, Reese asked, “Have you met with him?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Why not? Aren’t you curious?”

  “My personal curiosity is not the issue. I am here to get an answer and carry that answer back to my boss.” Bennett was in his mid-forties, his gray hair mixed with nearly jet black at the temples. Clean shaven and well dressed, he looked every bit the bureaucrat.

  “Well, your answer is still some time away.” Turning to address McWilliams, Reese asked, “You’ve talked to him, right?”

  “I have.”

  “Who else?”

  McWilliams hesitated for a moment, glancing at Bennett for authorization to proceed. Bennett nodded almost imperceptibly. “Actually, other than the guard at the front desk, the first person to speak with him was the Director.”

  Curious, Reese inquired, “Isn’t that a little odd?”

  “Absolutely. However, when the gentleman announced himself and asked for the Director, he asked the guard to convey a name, which he did. Apparently that name was sufficient to cause the Director to feel that he should speak to him, which he did for nearly an hour, in the same room where you met with….”

  “Elohim.”

  “You were the first to be given a name?”

  “Did he not use it with you?”

  “He gave me no name. He said it was unnecessary.”

  “So you were the second to meet with him?”

  “No, there were several before me, all linguists.”

  “Linguists?”

  “Yes. After the Director finished with the meeting, he thought that it would be a good test.”

  “And what happened?”

  Again the glance to Bennett. Again the nod. “The staff brought in people who are fluent in the ‘mainstream’ languages: Spanish, French, German, Russian. They then graduated to the more, ah, obscure languages.”

  “How did those go?”

  “He aced them all. In fact, it was the consensus of the linguists that his grasp of each of the languages, which they had spent a lifetime studying, was far superior to their own. Apparently, not only were the vocabulary and grammar flawless, but the syntax was perfect, and each language was spoken with an accent that could only come from a native speaker. He also demonstrated an affinity for the various dialects of each language, in some cases correcting the linguist in a small error.”

  “How long has he been here?”

  “Five days. And that’s odd, also.”

  “How so?”

  “During the last five days,” McWilliams said, opening the cover on an already thick manilla folder and referring to some notes, “he requested and drank a total of two glasses of water and one glass of orange juice, ate one sandwich, visited the restroom once, and has yet to fall asleep.”

  Reese was incredulous. “He hasn’t slept?”

  “Not for a moment.”

  “Is that possible? I mean, for a normal person?”

  “He is now at the outside edge of the envelope as far as records that have been set in the past. But no one who has stayed awake for five days can come anywhere close to being as alert and functional as he is.”

  Taking a moment to digest this all, Reese asked, “Was it after the linguists that you interviewed him?”

  “Yes, it was. Like you, I was initially kept in the dark on what had preceded my interview. My first impression was that he was suffering from a severe narcissistic disorder. It is a symptom of that disorder for the person to feel godlike.”

  “Is that your opinion now?”

  “Oh, God, no.” Realizing what he said, McWilliams lapsed into a high-pitched, almost girlish sounding giggle.

  “What is your opinion?”

  “Professor Johnson, having not had the burden imposed upon me to be the ‘final say’ on this topic, I feel comfortable concluding that He is the real thing.”

  Feeling a slight adrenaline rush punch through his body, Reese leaned forward. “You believe that he is God?”

  Taking a deep breath and letting it out very slowly, McWilliams answered, “I believe that He is who He says He is…the Creator.”

  “Why? What made you decide?”

  “You mean other than the obvious – His demeanor…the way that you feel when you are in the room with Him – I would suppose it would be what He knows.”

  Reese, remembering his meeting, understood. “Can you be more specific?”

  “Professor Johnson….”

  “Please,” Reese interrupted, “would everyone call me Reese?”

  “I’m sorry. Reese, it is. I have been with the Bureau for almost thirty years. I now head the profiling unit. Over the years I’ve worked on hundreds of cases, and my success rate has been good. When we got to the same point in the interview that you reached, and He offered to produce a miracle, I did not choose your option of asking Him to pick the form. Rather, I told Him that I had been haunted for the last twelve years by a serial rapist and killer whose victims had been little girls, all aged seven or eight. As far as we knew, there had been at least thirteen victims, and we were no closer to catching the perp after the last than after the first.

  “He asked to borrow a note pad, which I gave Him. On it, He wrote the name and address of a man in Sacramento.”

  “Is that where the past crimes occurred?”

  “No. Although the perp had moved around quite a bit, he hadn’t done anything there that had come to our attention. I called the Sacramento office and had a team sent out. When they arrived and rang the doorbell, our man answered. After our agents identified themselves, the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘Oh, thank God. I was praying that you would stop me soon.’ Searching the house with permission, we found souvenirs from each of the previous killings. We also found a sev
en-year-old girl, bound and gagged, in one of the bedrooms. The perp has confessed to all of the killings, including two that we weren’t aware of previously.”

  Reese asked, “Hasn’t law enforcement gotten similar results from psychics in the past?”

  “As far as I know, no psychics have ever been that specific; at least it has never been my experience that they have. But I did consider the possibility that He was simply clairvoyant, perhaps to a greater degree than any other we had worked with before.

  “When I arrived back in the interview room, I told Him about the suspect we had captured based on His information. He seemed uninterested. Not that He didn’t care, but almost as if He already knew. When He had given me the first name, I had torn the top sheet from the pad, leaving the blank pad on the table. After I returned, I noticed He had written nine other names and addresses. I asked who they were, and He told me they were the remaining nine killers that I had never found. They are being apprehended as we speak.”

  “Amazing!” exclaimed Claire, who had been silent to this point.

  McWilliams answered her, “Not as amazing as what happened next. I confronted Him with my suspicion that He was simply a psychic, an incredible psychic perhaps, but not God. At that point He told me that His assistance in capturing the ‘villains,’ His word, was a labor of love and not my miracle. I asked when my miracle was to occur, and He said it already had and that I was simply not yet aware of it.”

  “Are you aware of it now?”

  To answer, McWilliams stood and walked to a storage closet, opening the door. He reached in and grabbed the handles of an obviously expensive and well-used motorized wheelchair, backing it into the room. In a voice so quiet everyone had to strain to hear him, McWilliams explained, “This chair has been my second home for nearly twenty years. When I was a field agent, we had a bust go bad, and I took a .45-caliber slug in the back, completely severing my spine just above the waist. I have not been able to walk; in fact, I have felt absolutely nothing from the point of injury down for twenty years. When He told me that my miracle had already happened, He reached over and pinched my thigh.” McWilliams hesitated, overcome with emotion.

  After a few minutes passed, he was able to speak without sobbing. “The pain was glorious. For a moment I thought that the miracle was just to be able to feel again. Then He stood up and stepped around to stand in front of my chair. In a way that I can only describe as lovingly, He lifted each of my feet and flipped the supports out of the way. And I felt each touch, each movement! Then He straightened and said, ‘Craig, my beloved son, stand up and walk,’ reaching out for my hands.” Emotions again overcame him, and everyone looked down or away as McWilliams struggled to regain his composure.

  “Not only can I walk, I walk easily. There is none of the muscle atrophy that I had just three days ago. I’ve been to Walter Reed for x-rays, MRIs, and CAT scans; everything is normal. My own doctor, who has treated me for the past twenty years, swabbed me for a DNA test because he doesn’t believe it’s me.”

  That intrigued Reese. “The results of that test….”

  “Not in, yet. Hell, I mean heck, I’m even curious. One more thing – for years I’ve had physical therapy once a week, which included checking my weight. I had been to a therapy session only the day before my…my miracle. My weight was 246. They had been nagging me to cut back on some of my eating to get down to at least 210. My weight is now 206. Forty pounds in four days.”

  Reese was stunned, unsure of what to say.

  McWilliams continued, “There are other things. As I mentioned, my spine was severed above the waist. I was not only unable to walk or feel, I was also” – he paused, embarrassed – “dysfunctional in all other ways below the injury. My wife has suffered along with me for the last twenty years. That function has returned, as well. When I attended the training academy, I had four teeth knocked out while sparring. I’ve had a partial plate since then. My original teeth are back. And all of the little moles and skin tags that we all acquire as we get older are gone.”

  Reese once again found that his mind was not easily assimilating all of the input he was receiving. McWilliams’ description of events threatened to overwhelm him. He glanced at Claire who was staring at McWilliams with a strange look on her face, a look he had never seen before. Eventually, first clearing his throat, Reese spoke. “To point out the glaringly obvious, we are dealing with a truly unique being. I think that we need to begin to consider the possibility, at least, that he is what he purports to be.”

  Reynolds spoke up for the first time. “But is he necessarily God?”

  “Nicholas, that’s a hard one to answer. By his own words, he does not choose that title. He prefers Elohim. However, he does describe himself as the Creator.”

  “Reese,” McWilliams asked, “what, if any, significance does Elohim have?”

  "Quite a lot, actually. I attempted to bait him a bit with my reference to it being a Hebrew name. Its history is much broader than that. According to scholars, Elohim or Elohay is the first name for God found in the Bible. In Genesis 1:1, it states that in the beginning Elohim created the Heaven and the Earth. From the very beginning, this plural form for the name of God is used to describe the One God. In fact, Yahveh-elohim was translated to mean either Yahveh of the Gods or Lord and Lord God. More confusing is that bene ha’elohim is said to mean Sons of God, Sons of the Gods or, according to some early rabbis, merely righteous men. In scripture, Elohim, as a prefix, describes several characteristics of God: Elohay Tehilati means God of My Praise; Elohay Mishpat is the God of Justice; Elohay Marom, the God of Heights; Elohay Mikarov signifies God Who Is Near; Elohay Mauzi is the God of My Strength; Elohay Kedem…God of the Beginning; Elohay Yishi for God of My Salvation; Elohim Kedoshim is the Holy God; Elohim Chaiyim, the Living God; Elohay Selichot…God of Forgiveness; and Elohay Elohim means God of Gods.

  “A slight variation of Elohim,’lhm was found in the writings of the Canaanite Ugarit and was believed to describe the entire pantheon of their gods. Some scholars believe that the names Elohim and the Islamic Allah come from the same root. ‘Alah,’ by the way, means ‘to terrify.’ It is claimed by some that Elohim is actually a plural and denotes the Holy Trinity. Others believe that the plurality is specific and that it describes not God but a Council of Gods who act in concert. But it gets even more complicated by the fact that Elohim also describes the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel, raised by Saul in 1 Samuel 28:13. Saul is told by the witch of Endor that she sees ‘gods’ (elohim) coming up out of the earth, which tells me that the name was also used in ancient Israel simply to mean something akin to ‘divine beings.’

  “In Mormonism, Elohim, also spelled Eloheim, usually refers to God the Father as a totally distinct being separate from Jesus. They refer to Jesus as Yahweh or Jehovah. They also believe that Elohim actually denotes the Council of Gods and believe that mortal men as children of God the Father, with the help of Jesus, can become like Elohim in every way.”

  “So,” Reynolds asked, “the Mormons and the Jews believe in a Council of Gods, and the Catholics believe in a single God?”

  “Yes and no,” answered Reese. “The ancient teachings of the Jews indicated a belief in the Council, a belief that is downplayed today. The Catholics claim to be monotheistic yet believe in the Holy Trinity.”

  Reese continued, “There is also a spiritual philosophy called anthroposophy in which Rudolph Steiner attempted to marry science and religion. According to Steiner, there is a Hierarchy of Angels, and the Elohim are the 6th realm of this hierarchy in the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. A noted pupil of Saint Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite, said this hierarchic level of divine spirits is called the Exousiai in Greek or Potestates in Latin and is the next level above the three levels comprising the Angels, Archangels, and Archai/Principati. Since the human Self originated from them, the role of the Exousiai/Elohim in spiritual evolution is essential. The Exousiai/Elohim are intensely interested in the development of huma
nity. One of the spirits, Yahweh,was the divine ruler of the biblical Israelites who were supposed to receive the physical form of Christ as Jesus. Christ was a part of the Trinity, which ranks above all other hierarchies and is the direct ruler of the Exousiai.

  “Lastly, there is a French journalist named Raël who in 1973 claimed to have been visited by Yahweh, the leader of an advanced race of extraterrestrials known as the Elohim. Yahweh taught Raël the origins of humanity and its purpose. Yahweh also told Raël that Elohim had been mistranslated to the singular ‘God’ and, in fact, was the plural word which means ‘those who came from the sky.’ This was the beginning of a movement called Raëlism.”

  McWilliams, who had listened avidly, asked, “So, according to all that, He might be God, an angel, a representative of the Council of Gods, or a spaceman?”

  Reese answered, smiling, “Let’s just say that his choice for a name certainly provides us with ample alternatives.”