This morning I would like us to focus on these humble men…to see what their experience can teach us about the arrival of the Son of God for, you see, we too have received an invitation to hear and respond to the good news that Jesus’ birth heralded. Scripture tells us that these guys ACCEPTED God’s invitation-they responded to His special summons-and traveled to visit the Christ child. In case you haven’t guessed, the group of people I am referring to are of those SHEPHERDS who were caring for their flocks that first Christmas night-and God’s invitation was for them to be present at the birth of Jesus, His only Son. No, theirs came from the very God of the universe Himself….the One Being Who MADE all the stars and planets….Who according to Psalm 147:4, “determined the number of stars and calls them each by name…” You see, their invitation was not merely from some alien people of another planet. But the invitation these men received led to a FAR more significant ENCOUNTER than that of Dryfuss’ character. You see, twenty centuries ago a group of people did in fact receive a special invitation, heralding the visit to earth of a Being Who was beyond time and space. I dredge up this old movie memory because…there is a sense in which 2000 years ago something like the plot in Spielberg’s fictitious film actually happened. He saw the huge mother ship-bigger than many cities, covered with pulsating lights and lasers….and what’s more, he actually met the aliens who piloted it…the same ones who had issued his invitation to come in the first place. Dryfuss and some of these people ignored government barricades and headed off cross country in an attempt to get to Devil’s Tower…but only Dryfuss actually made it. Well, it turned out that this “urge” was actually a subliminal SUMMONS somehow broadcast by the aliens….an INVITATION to meet them at this location-this mountain-in Wyoming. Dozens of people who had seen the alien ships that night had the same urge. When he made this discovery his fixation gave way to an irresistible URGE to get to this mountain, so he set off-and he was not alone. He finally discovered that what he had been sculpting was an actual mountain in Wyoming known as Devil’s Tower. At this point his obsessive behavior became too much for his wife so she took their children and left, but even that couldn’t shock him out of his fixation with this mountain. He sculpted the shape in his pillow, then in the mashed potatoes he was having for dinner, and finally he built a huge, near life-sized replica in his living room. Well from then on he was obsessed with what he had seen….and for some reason he couldn’t get one image out of his mind: an odd shape…sort of a mountain, shaped like a volcano. When it flew off, he followed it to a hill where others had gathered to watch as several of these amazing ships flew all over the place. And, as the ship hovered overhead, his radio went haywire…the truck started shaking, anything metallic flew all over the place, the cab was filled with a bright light-then suddenly it all stopped-and when Dryfuss looked out the window he saw the space ship overhead…covered with lights. But, almost as soon as he arrived at the office his superiors sent him back out on the road to discover exactly WHERE the power drain was originating.ĭo you remember that scene where he was driving around in the dark on back roads in his utility truck and he got lost-so he stopped at a railroad crossing and unfolded his map to figure out where he was? When he did, headlights pulled up behind him and he waved the car around but instead of going around, the lights went OVER his utility truck…for it wasn’t a car after all. When these UFO’s first showed up, somewhere out in the Midwest, there were power outages all over and Richard Dryfuss, who played the role of a utility company worker was called in to help. You may recall that the PLOT of the film was built around the arrival of space ships from a distant planet somewhere in our galaxy. How many of you remember it’s debut? I went to see it with some of my college buddies and I remember that we were very impressed with the special effects, because they were of a caliber that we had never seen in a movie before. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.I’m not sure-but I believe the film that FIRST put Steven Spielberg on the map, so to speak, was: Close Encounters of the Third Kind. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it.
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