ALIEN INVADERS

By Paul McGuire

 

 

 

 

(The mass suicides of Heaven’s Gate cultists revealed a lot about spirituality in America . Here’s a closer look at the growing interest in UFOs and other strange New Age theories.) 

 

During Easter week, 39 devotees of a UFO cult called Heaven’s Gate killed themselves in Rancho Santa Fe, California. They believed that after their deaths they would join an alien spaceship they said was riding piggyback on the wake of Comet Hale-Bopp. As the story of their deaths unfolded, people the world over were stunned by the sights from the worst mass suicide in U.S. history. 

 

Photos and video clips showed the dead cultists dressed in black and shrouded with diamond-shaped purple cloths. Next to them or under their beds in their suburban San Diego mansion were overnight bags that were packed, authorities speculated, for their rendezvous with Hale-Bopp’s celestial rider. There were no signs of violence, indicating they all died willingly. 

 

Days after their deaths, the world seemed to be buzzing with chatter about the latest on the subjects of UFOs, cults and odd New Age beliefs. The deaths in San Diego served to spark new questions in the minds of many Americans about mortality, immortality and what sort of life might follow their earthly one. 

 

“Are there UFOs from other planets?” people wanted to know. “Has Earth been visited by beings from other galaxies?” “Have people literally been abducted and taken aboard alien spacecrafts?” Although Heaven’s Gate represents the radical fringe of a global UFO movement, there are millions of less-dedicated, everyday followers who believe in UFOs and alien life. 

 

In fact, recent polls indicate that more than 40 percent of Americans believe aliens have visited our planet. Other recent data suggest that more than 1 million inhabitants of this planet say they’ve had a personal encounter with a being from another planet--or with a UFO. 

 

Is Anyone Out There? 

 

Across the globe, UFO sightings are reported almost weekly. Many are published on the Internet with related reports of such things as “crop circles” and cattle mutilations. According to UFO buffs, the proliferation of both crop circles and cattle mutilations is attributed to UFOs and aliens because of the high degree of radiation accompanying them. Strange ring-like patterns discovered on July 27, 1991 , near Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, England , and in 1992 in Durham, North Carolina , are considered to be attempts by aliens to contact us. Moreover, an estimated 10,000 cases of cattle mutilations have been reported in which the animals have been “exsanguinated,” or had their blood removed. Some people believe these mutilations were performed by aliens. 

 

Many of the true believers in aliens and UFOs cannot be dismissed simply as oddballs or eccentrics. They include scientists, intellectuals, government leaders--and astronauts. One of them is Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper. In 1951, as a young pilot, he was flying a U.S. Air Force F-86 jet over Germany when he saw flying-saucer-like objects flying in formation. In 1978 he wrote a letter to the United Nations stating he believed in UFOs. In June 1965 astronaut Ed White--the first American to walk in space--and astronaut James McDivitt were passing over Hawaii in a Gemini spacecraft when they saw weird-looking metallic objects. Although photographs were taken, they were never released. In December 1965 Gemini astronauts James Lovell and Frank Borman saw what appeared to be a UFO while making their second orbit of Earth. 

 

The existence of UFOs and the possibility of aliens is taken very seriously by some scientific and governmental communities. An offshoot of NASA called SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has actually issued policies to deal with any alien encounter or communication, should one occur. In addition, the Secretary General of the United Nations--in accordance with Article XI of the Treaty Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, the Moon and Other Bodies--has instructed anyone who discovers credible evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence to inform the U.N. There are others who believe the U.S. government has for years withheld proof about the existence of extraterrestrial life forms from the American people. One such person is former astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who walked on the moon during the Apollo 14 space flight in 1971. Mitchell rejects the government account of an alleged UFO crash in Roswell , New Mexico , in 1947, in which federal authorities said the fallen craft was nothing more than a hot-air balloon. Mitchell says proof that would verify the craft as a UFO is being classified and covered up by the U.S. government. 

 

Former New York Times journalist Howard Blum, whose work has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, says the U.S. government is covering up its military investigations into UFO sightings and alien visitations. Blum is the author of an investigative book on UFOs called Out There. In his book, he reveals the existence of a top-secret “UFO Working Group” that was formed in 1987. The organization, which is made up of scientists and military officers, has met at the Pentagon to investigate UFOs. The U.S. government has, in fact, had a long history of investigating UFOs. Their research originated with what was called Project Blue Book, which--after examining more than 13,000 cases of UFO sightings over 20 years--officially debunked the existence of UFOs. Later, a secret group called MJ-12 (Operation Majestic 12) was created by then-President Harry Truman on Sept. 24, 1947 , to deal with public hysteria surrounding certain UFO sightings. Today, U.S. Air Force Intelligence, the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency continue to research extraterrestrial intelligence. 

 

Eye-Witness Accounts 

 

Hollywood , not surprisingly, has capitalized on this interest in space and celestial life with such TV shows as The X Files, Star Trek and Babylon 5. Films such as Independence Day, Communion and Close Encounters of the Third Kind have assumed that life exists on other planets. Because of the money that can be made from popular films and television shows, the question is raised whether some eye-witness accounts about aliens are merely an attempt to profit from a modern-day mystery. Best-selling author Whitley Strieber writes about his own abduction by aliens in his books Communion, Transformation and Breakthrough. It is noteworthy that Strieber experimented in the occult before having his alien encounters. His recent books include The Secret School: Preparation For Contact and Evenings With Demons. Bud Hopkins, a painter and sculptor in New York City , has written a series of alien-encounter books, including Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions. Witnessed details the story of Linda Cortile, a woman who witnesses say was beamed aboard a spaceship on Nov. 30, 1989. According to their statements, Linda was levitated by a blue light onto a large, glowing, reddish-orange UFO near the Brooklyn Bridge . 

 

Yet how do we know that reports of alien encounters are true or that extraterrestrial life exists? Does the Bible say anything about beings visiting Earth? Are these encounters, and others like them, simply the result of drug use, over-active imaginations or memories that surface during hypnotic treatments? 

 

Actually, there are far too many documented accounts of both abductions and UFO sightings to dismiss all of them with simplistic explanations. It is likely that the experiences people report are real. However, the source of their alien encounters is undoubtedly not extraterrestrial, but demonic. 

 

Aliens & Nephilim 

 

A close relation exists today among New Age activities, the occult, UFO abductions and alien encounters. In general, alien communications can be placed in the category of what the Bible says about doctrines of demons and deceiving spirits (see 1 Tim. 4:1). 

 

Even more disturbing than mere communication with aliens is the growing number of reports from women who claim to have been impregnated with alien seed, as well as accounts about sexual activity among angels, aliens, demons and humans. How accurate and reliable these reports are is hard to tell. 

 

Yet according to Scripture, such accounts may not be so far-fetched. In Matthew 24:37, Jesus says, “But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be” (NKJV). Some Bible scholars believe that in the days of Noah, just before the Flood, fallen angelic beings were visiting the earth and having sexual relations with women, producing a unique offspring the Bible refers to as “the Nephilim,” or giants (see Gen. 6:4). These Bible scholars believe that it was the interbreeding of angels and mankind that was a contributing factor to God’s sending the Flood. In Jude 6-7 the apostle Jude writes about angels who had “given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh.” 

 

UFO researcher and astrophysicist R. Jacques Vallee, who served as the real-life model for the French scientist played by actor Francois Truffaut in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, has an interesting theory. Although Vallee is not a Christian, he believes a relation exists among such phenomena as shining UFO saucers; the Virgin Mary’s appearance to 70,000 people in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917; and Mormonism founder Joseph Smith’s vision of God and Jesus. He equates the global belief in flying saucers to earlier beliefs, such as the one held by Paiute Indians in California that said the region was populated by an advanced civilization called Hav-Masuvs who traveled in silvery “flying-canoes.” It is Vallee’s conclusion that such beliefs are coming from a different dimension than our own, perhaps a spiritual one. This is precisely what the apostle Paul refers to when he says in Ephesians 6:12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against... spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” 

 

The Last Days 

 

Many people in the UFO movement believe we are rapidly approaching a time they call “full global disclosure,” during which the U.S. government or some other governmental body will announce the existence of extraterrestrials or state that there has been communication with alien intelligence.