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restrial civilization. The Biblical story of Enoch, for example, relates how he dreamed of ‘‘two men, very tall, such as I have never seen on earth. And their faces shone like the sun, and their eyes were like burning lamps... They stood at the head of my bed and called me by my name. I awoke from my sleep and saw clearly these men standing in front of me.” These tall men took him into the sky and conducted him on a tour of “seven heavens.’ When he returned to earth, he wrote 366 books about what he had seen and learned. Although The Book of the Secrets of Enoch has been widely published, the Bible grants him only a few lines of Chapter 5, Genesis. Another book, a latter-day Bible, was created in the nineteenth century by a young man who claimed an experience similar to Enoch’s, except that he did not go off to other worlds. It is the Book of Mormon, the Mormon Bible, and is purportedly a history of North America in Biblical times. Therein lies another remarkable story. Da Teena dee, One 99 1007) 2-8 Hn na Tee On Tuesday, September 23, 1823, a young man named Joseph Smith awoke in his bedroom in Palmyra, New York, to find a strange luminous being standing over his bed. This being, he said, was dressed in a white robe and had a brilliantly glowing face. He called the youth by name and told him where he would find some gold plates buried nearby. When the proper time arrived, the entity is supposed to have told him, he was to dig the plates up. Then the figure floated upward and vanished. Sometime later the boy was crossing a field when, in his own words, “‘my strength entirely failed me, and I fell helplessly to the ground, and for a time was quite unconscious of anything.’’ When he came to, he said the same “‘messenger’”’ was standing over him and gave him further instructions about the gold tablets. He was to dig them up four years later. So on Saturday, September 22, 1827, Joseph Smith went to the appointed spot and started digging. Sure enough, he actually found a stone box containing several plates of gold bearing a strange, neatly engraved writing. Later eleven of his friends and neighbors examined the plates and signed affidavits swearing that they had seen them and that they contained writing “‘which has the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship.” Smith was not a well-educated man. He worked for years deciphering and translating the writing on these tablets, and when he was finished, he had an intrigning historical document that was, apparently, a history of North America in very ancient times-—predating the Indians. This docu- ment became the Book of Mormon, for Joseph Smith founded the Mormon Church. The tablets later disappeared or were somehow de- Machines from Beyond Time / 63