“There was war in Heaven.” The Bible.

In 1972 Jerry Bernard Orbach was at the High School, Patterson Collegiate, in Windsor, Ontario Canada, as an invited guest to direct the annual school play. The play that year was George Bernard Shaw’s “The Man of Destiny.”

The play has only four characters. Napoleon Bonaparte is the principal role. Everyone in the school felt honoured that Jerry Bernard Orbach, a famous American Actor from New York, had cast himself in the role of Napoleon; especially since the other three roles were played by Patterson Collegiate’s Canadian students: Binoth, Sarojini, and Seebadri.

The production was a phenomenal success. Nonetheless, nowadays over fifty years later while on the one hand it is practically impossible to find anyone who remembers Orbach’s Napoleon, it is quite possible to read an account of what he said about the American movie “The Wizard of Oz” during his many casual conversation sessions with Patterson’s teachers and students.

The movie had been made in 1939. It was an instant world hit. The story was America’s first fantasy for children that took the world by storm. To this day, most persons claim it to be America’s greatest- ever fantasy story for children.

The author of the story “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was Lyman Frank Baum. He was long dead when the movie was made.

Jerry Bernard Orbach at Patterson Collegiate said that while Baum had written and published the fantasy, he had not been the original creator. His sister was. Her name was Sarah Baum.

Jerry said his family and the Baum family lived on the same street in New York when he was a child.
The Baum family was wealthy. The six children were chronically sickly, from birth. Lyman was the fourth child. The eldest child was Sarah.

All the children were home-schooled because they were too sickly to be away from home for hours at a time. The wealthy parents provided their children at home with every resource to be engaged intellectually.

By the time she died at age sixteen, Sarah had read every published fiction story in the world written for children. Every story she read, she would then read to her siblings, and engage them in lively discussions. Sarah directed her siblings in short play scripts she created from the stories.

Those skits helped significantly in the children’s physical and mental well-being. The parents built a special room that served as a stage and mini auditorium for the family and friends.

Sarah’s first and only purpose in the play skits was melodramatic excitement within themes of hope.

Among her favourite stories were the Ancient-Greek tales of persons eventually transformed by Gods into stars in the heavens for all eternity: Herakles, Orion, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Perseus, Cygnus, Draco, Aquarius.

Sarah drew deep satisfaction in the fact that all the Gods have been outlasted by their constellations created for people to have everlasting joyous hope.

Among the fiction stories told by people, the children’s favourite author was the English seventeenth century author, John Bunyan. His book, “Pilgrim’s Progress From This World To That Which Is To Come” provided the children endless opportunities for original character improvisations in its eighteen allegorical persons such as Evangelist, Help, Worldly Wiseman, Faithful, Legality.

Because of their chronic poor health, all the Baum children during Sarah’s lifetime preferred to not spend long times far from home. The weather accounts of tornados especially frightened and depressed them.

During tornado season each year in the ten States along “Tornado Alley”, such as Kansas and Texas, Sarah had to be extra assertive in assuring the other children that places like Kansas and Texas were too far away for their tornados to reach New York.

It helped Sarah considerably to quote the Bible to convince the fearful Baum children that tornados cannot be all-evil because God Himself used a whirlwind to send prophet Elijah to Heaven.

It was inevadable that Sarah herself would try her hand at creating stories for her and her siblings to perform on their home stage.

During his invited stay at Patterson Collegiate, Jerry Bernard Orbach narrated one of Sarah’s creations:
“There came a time when there was a war in heaven. Although there is no record that any human on Earth knew there was a war ravaging Heaven, everyone on Earth at the time was frightened by the noises of that war that sounded like continual crashes of thunder and lightning; even during sunny rainless days.

Azrael, one of the warring Angels fighting for almighty God, Jehovah, fell “like lightning” from Heaven to Earth one night. He was severely wounded. The wounds that Angels suffered in Heaven were fatal when they fell to Earth because when on Earth during that war, Angels instantly became mortal.

Sarah was hurrying home from the shoe factory where she was a paid employee. It was a dark evening, noisy from the war in Heaven. She had worked an extra shift. She shone her pedestrian way along the gravel narrow pathway with her hand-held flashlight.

She stopped abruptly when wounded Azrael stumbled onto the pathway a few steps in front of her. She turned and ran back. Azrael called out to her for help. He called her by her name.

A voice in her cried out to her that she keep running away. Another voice in her, perhaps because Azrael had called her name, drew her attention to something heavenly about the cries of that wounded person calling out to her for help.

Sarah stopped running away. She turned and cautiously, slowly, walked back to the stranger, all the while lighting her way with her flashlight.

When she reached Azrael he was sitting on the ground, utterly exhausted, parts of him covered in blood. When she offered to go get help, he gently replied that all he needed was water to drink, and he would recover enough to be on his way.

He did not tell her he was an Angel. As an Angel, although he had lost his immunity and almightiness, his body was yet forever heavenly in that when wounded, all he needed for full recovery, was to drink water.

When she told him she had plenty of water to drink at her apartment about a block away, he agreed to let her help him limp along immediately.

Without her knowing, Azrael transformed himself to appear as a young woman, as a precaution in case someone saw them walking along in close contact in the dark.

Inside Sarah’s one-bedroom apartment’s kitchen, Azrael drank three glasses of water. He felt his healing increasing instantly. He thanked Sarah, and took his leave.

Azrael knew it was only a matter of hours before an Angel rescue team from Heaven would find him. And so he went only a little way from Sarah’s home to await them.

While he was in Sarah’s apartment, he had seen a book on a table. He had recognized it instantly. It was required reading of all Angels in Heaven: John Bunyan’s Christian allegory, “Pilgrim’s Progress From This World To That Which Is To Come.” He winsomely recalled his three favourite figurative characters out of the eighteen depicted: Goodwill, Hopeful, and Shining One.

Azrael was especially glad that the author had chosen to name his protagonist pilgrim, Christian. His memories of the book generated a psychological warmth deep inside him that speeded up his healing.

Too, Azrael was aware he was falling in love with Sarah as one of the allegorical pilgrim saviours depicted in John Bunyan’s book.

Angel Azrael decided that when the rescue team found him, and restored in him his heavenly almightiness, he would transform Sarah, pilgrim, to be a wonderfully bright constellation in the heavens, for forever and forever.”