Part 2: “Just the FAQs, Ma’am”

In last week’s column about the ancient world’s view of fixed and wandering stars, more commonly referred to as stars and planets today, I made reference to a certain survey question posed during a gathering of Christian thoughtleaders held here in Roswell to discuss their research, views and published works on UFOs, aliens and the Bible. I thought I’d share more about this historic event today.

That gathering was the First Christian Symposium on Aliens, held July 2009 in Roswell at the then named Best Western Sally Port Inn, now Clarion Inn & Suites. Video recordings of the entire three days of lectures with PowerPoints may be viewed for free on YouTube by searching the event name.

First Christian Symposium on Aliens — Panel Discussion — Part 1/3

Those assembled included a fixed and wandering star-studded cast composed of credentialed university professors and active pulpit ministers and counselors specializing in helping those experiencing tormenting night terrors, whom would be found often by individuals searching “How do I stop alien abductions?” or “What does the Bible say about UFOs?”

According to the still-online website the symposium’s mission was “To assemble many of most noted Christian authors and researchers in the field of ‘alien’ research, so that others may benefit from their consensus view and combined decades of research and ministry, and thus equip The Body of Christ to not be deceived by these ‘...seducing spirits and doctrines of devils’ (1 Timothy 4:1) and perhaps most importantly, to effectively minister to those currently bound and tormented by their influence.

Towards this Vision & Mission, 11 evangelical Christians, including practicing pastors and ministers, PhD scholars and published authors, well-known for their work in studying UFOs and alleged alien activity from a Biblical perspective, presented a series of 9 lectures and completed a 4-hour Symposium during this 3-day event held to coincide with the annual Roswell UFO Festival.”

Stacked deck?

From an objective opinion looking in, the language above, including devils and spirits and “not be deceived” seems pretty slanted, as in, “foregone conclusion territory,” especially considering that was the published mission statement before the group even convened. And it was. I know not only because was I there, I helped craft those words myself. But before you dismiss the group’s conclusions, don’t ignore the words also above: “... combined decades of research and ministry.” As in compared to, let’s say … yours?

It’s quite true that often many Christians, when asked about such things as aliens, UFOs or life on other planets have historically tossed out what seems like a kneejerk reaction of “it’s demonic,” but if asked to elaborate why or what information or research has led them to such a belief, my experience is they will begin to fumble for words. The other side is they say what any smart 12-year-old would say about “statistical probabilities” and the old “it would be pretty egotistical to think we’re the only ones…” They will answer from their imaginations and suppositions as if whatever they dreamt up settled the matter, I mean, but never speaking from the word of God or usually even any personal study.

Even in Roswell, ask any Christian, especially pastors, how much UFO research they’ve done, which books written by which Christians they’ve read could they please recommend, but frankly, ask and 90% of the time you can tell from their blank stare that Elvis has been abducted from the building on that one.

Not this 2009 symposium of Christians. Beginning with three PhDs in their combined Roswell presence (and a fourth disabled credentialed university professor whose pretyped answers were read) plus true published book titles including “The Facade,” “UFOs in the New Age,” “Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection” and multiple others. Of course I am simply not able to do justice in print to the biographies and credentials of the 11 people that answered 50 frequently asked questions for survey and visual piechart purposes, including last week’s topic, “Do you believe God created life on other planets?”

Point being, these were not unstudied kneejerk reactions. But as reported last week, 11 of the 11, chosen not because of their conclusions but because of their resumes, when polled said “No” to that one. And they’ve done the work and been sharpened by iron. I’m sure that you, reader, have an opinion; “everybody’s got one,” but do you have an informed opinion?

Whatever amount of time you’ve put into the question, those who have put years of very niche expert-level question-asking and seeking God for answers, evidence, ideas, theology, experience, revelation, testimonials all stated, “No. There is not life on other planets.”

There is definitely something going on, today and for hundreds or thousands of years, but according to the vast majority of those with a resume worthy of caring about their answers to the question, when convened, reported that the activity currently labeled “UFOs and aliens” does not represent advanced entities, but fallen ones.

“And then?”

And then they answered 49 more questions.

When asked, “Do you think that any encounters with genuine extraterrestrial biological life (not angels, etc) are mentioned historically in the Bible?” a viewing of the panel on YouTube reveals a colored circle pie graph breakdown of how many exactly answered and how. All 50 nuanced questions included options “I don’t know,” “maybe,” “not sure” and even “abstain” allowed, yet when asked directly and on this public record an astoundingly high number of questions received a nine or higher response out of 11 of “No,” including the above (paraphrasing) “Are aliens mentioned/recorded in the Bible?”

“No, aliens are not mentioned in the Bible” many responded that weekend, at least not until words like “demonic,” “false gods,” “idols,” “tormenting spirits and doctrines of devils,” “incubus” or “elves” and others also enter the conversation.

Among other things, this advanced group clearly united as well on saying “No” to “Do you believe that some UFO sightings are caused by extraterrestrials visiting earth?” as well as “Yes” to “Do you believe that some UFO sightings are caused by evil spirits, known as fallen angels?”

Would you like to know more about the proceedings of the only gathering of credentialed Christians dedicated to asking what the Bible says about UFOs and aliens? I’ll cover more next week. As a teaser, besides their nine roughly one-hour-each presentations available online, the last days’ panel (see what I did there?) gave their answers to three questions they were sent one month prior to arriving in Roswell to minister.

Beside life on other planets, next week I will offer some of their spoken answers typed out for you in this column to: “How would you counsel someone claiming to have an ‘alien abduction’ experience?” and “If there were an official announcement that UFOs are real and aliens are visiting us, how would you respond?”

I’d like you to think about your answers, as well.

Welcome back. We left off on a bit of a cliffhanger, reporting, somewhat belatedly, on the world’s First Christian Symposium on Aliens held locally in July 2009, concurrent with the annual Roswell UFO Festival. For review, the event represented “... 11 evangelical Christians, including practicing pastors and ministers, PhD scholars and published authors, well-known for their work in studying UFOs and alleged alien activity from a Biblical perspective [and] presented a series of 9 lectures and completed a 4-hour Symposium during this 3-day event …”

The event website still reports their “consensus view” realized after the nine presentations were given over Friday and Saturday before live audiences. On Sunday, 50 questions, drawn from exhaustive UFO and reported alien activity as well as popular biblical claims about the topics, were examined. These questions were sent to each minister in advance and their answers charted statistically, still able to be viewed by searching YouTube for “Christian Symposium on Aliens.”

First Christian Symposium on Aliens — Panel Discussion — Part 1/3

In addition to the survey questions, three essay questions were also posed, sent one month in advance, to prepare before answering “freestyle” for the record.

Last week we covered some of their responses to “Do you believe God created life on other planets?” Today we pick up with “alien abduction.”

1 in 40

Reported during the course of the symposium, CBS and Roper polls from the era revealed as much as 2–3% of the U.S. population consistently admitted to something they labeled akin to the stereotypical alien abduction experience, or “CE4,” a “close encounter of the fourth kind,” as described by a scale popularized by USAF scientist J. Allen Hyneck in the 1970s.

This number, originally an offhand answer given by Hyneck on “how many” people are affected by abductions, is in perfect keeping with research presented in Preston Dennett’s 1996 book “One in Forty,” in which his abduction investigations bore out Hyneck’s estimate that about 2.5% of us are living with a secret they tell few about, if any, ever — including yours truly, until 1997, when I came out and then moved to Roswell.

The upshot for survey purposes was that if any person knows 40 people fairly well in their family, work, church or other routines, then they know a self-perceived “alien abductee” who has probably not “beamed out of the closet” to you their beliefs about their experiences.

These numbers hit almost disbelievably to most at first, but any amount of research into the topic will yield that they are not exaggerated. Searching the “1992 MIT alien abduction conference” will reveal works published following a much larger-scale academic gathering held at the Masschussetts Institute of Technology, co-chaired by Harvard University’s Head of Psychiatry, Dr. John Mack, and MIT physicist, David Pritchard.

An Amazon review of “Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference Held at M.I.T. Cambridge, Ma.,” summarizes that “118 papers” were presented at this five-day event, including such provocative titles as “Physical Evidence and Abductions” (David Pritchard, MIT); “Religious Perspective of Stories: Contactee to Abductee” (J. Gordon Melton, UC-Santa Barbara); and “Psychosocial Characteristics of Abductees” (Mark Rodeghier, University of Illinois at Chicago).

I mention this in conjunction with the Christian symposium held in Roswell largely to affirm that many more people than most would guess are living with an experience well documented medically, described by most firsthand as “torment,” and yet they remain largely in the dark on whom to trust with their experience or where to turn for counsel.

“Pastor, HELP! I’m being abducted by aliens!”

The symposium asked each respondent how they would counsel any who came to them claiming such, asking for help to make it stop. For most on this panel, such counseling was already routine.

Hailing from a known “UFO hotspot” of activity, Leesburg, Florida, Pastor Chris Ward, D. Min., introduced the topic by saying that people were coming to him “for prayer and deliverance. Some people were quite frightful because they frequently saw UFOs. … Some reported being abducted or having encounters of the fourth kind.”

Ward went to his denomination on how to handle this, and, in his words, they instructed, “Well, tell them they’re crazy and go see a psychiatrist.”

Instead, Ward reported he would pray with hurting people without having to “believe what they believe. If they’re coming to the Lord for relief, then I’m just thankful that they came to me.”

From there, the outreach blossomed to become a leading 2000s-era destination for alien abduction and exorcism searches, and Ward continued ministering to this people group until his death in 2019.

Co-organizer Joseph G. Jordan, a former NASA safety specialist and Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) researcher and state section director, also presented his life testimony of conversion to Christianity as a result of alien abduction research. After interviewing, counseling and praying with “hundreds of testimonies over the years that the name and authority of Jesus Christ works over this experience…” to end abductions both in progress and as a life pattern, Jordan continues to share his research at conferences including Roswell, and in book form, most recently in a work co-authored with yours truly, “Red Flags of Ufology.”

Pastor, deliverance minister and author Ruzz Dizdar, now deceased, added that whatever the circumstance was, “it’s not outside the ministry of Jesus.” In from “down under,” then Australian CEO of Creation Ministries International, Gary Bates, responded that he would often affirm the reality of the experience but “not proffer an immediate answer,” saying that telling people they’re crazy or the experience is demonic “pushes them in the opposite direction into the arms of the UFO-believing community, the hypnotist or wherever…” instead of to the Church or to Jesus Christ for their healing. Agreeing with others, Bates called for listening with respect and allowing contactees to talk through their experiences while praying for discernment.

Leading academic, Christian apologist and UFO cult author Dr. William Alnor, also deceased, formerly Texas A&M’s journalism department director as well as Calvary Chapel, Cultlink and Campus Crusade for Christ minister at various junctures, emphasized that “... a lot of what’s been given to us from the UFO movement is a different worldview than the biblical worldview,” and that the undone ministry to “the cults and the occult are the unpaid bills of the Church” due today.

Hebrew scholar, author, university professor, and later, top academic editor for Logos Bible Software, Dr. Michael Heiser, also deceased, agreed that he could not add much to all that had been said by others, unless he were feeling “kind of cranky,” he would then ask pastors, “So, what other thing that has saturated the culture so thoroughly, that has such great deceptive power, are you ignoring?”

Space prohibits my planned exploration into more from 2009. Aside from the videos online, since last week’s column, Jordan and I have agreed to convene once again this July, before we, too, are “also deceased,” for a Second Christian Symposium on Aliens.

There will be no lectures or presentations, however; we will simply present ourselves in open session(s) to any and all clergy for question and answer.

Free registration info may be made by emailing Jordan in advance via CE4president@yahoo.com.