God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

Tonight I listened to a CD with the story of how Sid Roth, Messianic Jew and TV host, came to Christ. He wasn't raised that way. He tells an audience of Jewish people in Boca Raton, Florida, that he was separated from his wife and daughter at the time when he was encouraged by a friend to attend a New Age training center. There they taught people to meditate and accelerate their brain cells in order to become enlightened. They promised the clients that if they complete the training and their program doesn't work, they would refund their money. Sid thought it was just crazy stuff and wanted his money back, so he toughed it out. At the end, they encourage the clients to meditate and to invite a counselor spirit into their head. As proof that something new had entered Sid's life they presented him with the name of a woman about whom he knew nothing. Suddenly he saw a vision which suggested to him that she had cancer in her left breast. They said that was exactly right. At firs

Today there are several TV shows here in the US that deal with ghost hunting. . .Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, Ghost Stories, Celebrity Ghost Stories, Paranormal State, and an occasional documentary about a famous exorcism or haunted house. Charismatic, TV-friendly hunters bring in high tech equipment such as digital recorders to record ghostly voices called Electronic Voice Phenomenon ( EVP ). There are night vision TV cameras, computer monitors watching every room, walkie talkies, Electromagnetic Frequency monitors, and heat sensing equipment. There is the interview with clients: We heard children crying or giggling, we saw a lady dressed in last century's fashion, we were touched, we heard a voice telling us to get out, we heard footsteps, things fly off the kitchen counter, something appears to me at night, we feel watched all the time, a voice tells me to kill myself or kill my parents or my kids, etc. In a haunted home, people live in terror as things literally go bump in

Psalm 1 says, "Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers (NRSV). A poetic metaphor, of course. But what does it really mean? That nothing bad will ever happen to a God-centered person? Of course not. We all know that such people can have car accidents, develop cancer, lose their homes, lose a child, wind up divorced, or become depressed and angry. Goodness knows Israel and every major hero and heroine in the Hebrew Bible had crosses to bear and trials to overcome. So what point was the author of the psalm making with such confidence? The water represents God's presence in our lives... an otherworldly energy that brings them through all tests and trial

One more year of college for son Ben. His girlfriend has already graduated and gotten her first job. Son Chris has one more year of classwork in his Ph.D. program. After that he prepares for his comps and outlines his dissertation. So next summer will be a time fraught with life-changing decisions and commitments for those 3 young adults. It reminds me a little of my own story when I was in Kentucky sometime in late 1980. I had a wonderful job as a Geologic Draftsperson for the Kentucky Geological Survey, located on the U.K. campus in Lexington, KY. I loved what I did, where I worked, and who I worked with. The problem was that I was listed as a Teacher's Aid and I made the same salary. I was grindingly poor. Life was like quick sand. Pull one foot out and the other sinks. I lived with a cat named Mugsy in a small trailer in a trailer park. The park had its own ambiance which wasn't entirely unpleasant, but I could barely afford to feed the two of us and keep the trailer is bas

It may not be fire, but it has been graphically described by several authors who have stumbled onto different versions of it. Dr. Frank Ritchie and Angie Fenimore began as nonbelievers but ended as devout Christians because of what they saw in Otherworld. Robert A. Monroe and Rosalind McKnight practiced decades of out of body experiments with no particular religious orientation. They did not encounter God or Jesus Christ, but they did describe many a miserable, lost, and benighted spirit. Monroe was occasionally accosted by spooky, sexual entities who tried to seduce him into an erotic encounter. Monroe describes the fate of two of his close intellectual friends and that of his father, none of whom were in a peaceful heavenly situation. One of them came up to greet him through a hole in the floor of some Otherworld room. He appeared as a gaseous cloud. As he began to address Monroe, guiding hands interrupted the interview and led Monroe away. Monroe's description of angry, desperat

A sophistry is something that looks good, feels good, and sounds really good...so good that it becomes an absolute truth for long periods of time, deeply impacting culture, before people realize that it's just wrong and they have to let the idea go. A sophistry stops all progress until it is exposed. One example in our own history in the U.S. is that black people are not fully human, so it's OK to buy and sell them on the open market. One of the biggest sophistries in the world today is promoted by the global Christian church. It is the evangelical belief that the Bible is inerrant, that there is no error in the Scripture, that all ideas expressed are those of God Himself. The belief that there can be no human content or cultural bias in the writing of the Bible is just wrong. To continually aver that the Bible is perfect, inerrant, and always reflects God's current view of the world sounds so good, so pious, so holy, so heroic...and is always rewarded with amens and "

I quit blogging for some time now because I realized that the ideas and info I was sharing in my blog are the same content that I want to write about in a book. However, I just have to express my frustration as I read about the Invisible Helpers who guided Rosalyn McKnight around the cosmos. Robert A. Monroe of the Monroe Institute was her monitor. A remote viewer is not informed about the actual target he or she is supposed to view. The monitor receives an envelope from a client (eg. CIA, DIA, a corporation). The monitor does not open the envelope, but he might say, the target is a person. The idea is to not 'frontload' the viewer with information that may taint the results. After the viewing, the envelope is opened and the viewer gets 'feedback,' an important step in quality development and control. Sometimes the target is Jesus or Jesus Christ. When it is, Jesus is actually out there. The viewer who may or may not be a Christian, will probably not recognize him as Je

Dr. John Lerma is a hospice doctor with the Houston Medical Center, hospice care. He is in a perfect position to examine afterlife experiences by interviewing his own patients and inquiring about their pre-death visions and revelations. His book is fascinating, enlightening, and perplexing at the same time. First of all, one thinks of angelic visitations as a relatively rare event, but in Lerma's book angels are everywhere. Of course, we only hear the stories where they appear, so that could make perfect sense. Second,the patients give long explanations as to what the angels tell them. Whether the age is 4 or 9 or 88, they all sound lecturish with consistent themes in several of the lectures such as the covenant agreement of the adult soul prior to conception in which the soul chooses its fate. That fate may include drug addiction, murder, drunk driving, or rape. It's all for the benefit of humanity. It all works out perfectly. Another popular theme is that there are no dark sp

In my previous blog, I promised to write about Dr. Richard Eby's father, who worked for G.E.'s High Voltage Bushing Department. The company's president told Mr. Eby that bushings were an essential part of America's future. The lack of bushing technology was holding back progress in the electrification of the country. What was needed was some type of porcelain or material that could withstand millions of volts of electricity, not only from the electricity generated but from the lightning storms that hit the wires. When Hoover Dam was being built, the issue of bushings became critical. After many years, four labs were getting nowhere. Finally Eby Sr. gave up and asked for God's help. The next morning, his Bible fell open to John 2, the story of the Wedding at Cana where Jesus Christ turned the water in six large ceramic pots into wine. Suddenly he felt God speaking directly to his mind. Six large ceramic pots that withstood the energy or power it would take to rearran

In his book Caught Up Into Paradise (1978), Dr. Richard Eby tells the true tale of what happened after he fell off a rotted balcony and landed on his head on cement. His skull was cracked open and blood gushed everywhere. He was told by doctors later that he actually bled out by the time he got to the hospital. The ER refused to waste blood on this dying 60-year-old man. They thought they could earn a few extra pennies by sewing the scalp back together and save the morgue from having to do it. Forty cents per stitch, is what they told Eby later, but they did a sloppy job of it because after all, the man was dead. Meanwhile, Eby was in eternity, for just a while. He examined his robed, ghostly body. He smelled the air of Paradise, examined the flowers. They were all perfect, therefore all the same. His body was transparent. No genitals. There were no shadows because light was everywhere. Colors were brilliant, including the white of the little flowers. To make a long story short, Eby

Exodus 20:4-6, NIV reads: 4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments. It sounds a little unfair for God to punish one generation for the sins of a former generation, but I think what is happening here is not an unfair dispersal of God's punishment but a cause and effect relationship of negative influences passed from one generation to another. That still isn't fair, but anyone with open eyes can see that the sins or indiscretions of one generation can cause tremendous despair, failure, and difficulties for the next, and that those influences can last for generations of dysfunctional families. Gods

The little black blob appeared in the home of Ron and Linette shortly after a woman she knew dropped by the house for a visit. That woman had been playing with a Ouija Board in her former location. Linette knew that playing with the OB could open portals in the spirit world, so everyone who knew her knew that she wouldn't approve, including this lady. Linette is an evangelical Christian who has no interest in playing games with the spirit world. Nevertheless, when the woman left, she left behind a 'hitchhiker,' a deposit of something spiritual, but not Christian. Linette began to notice that when she got up at night to get a drink or use the bathroom, a little black shadow would appear here and there. She ignored it, or told herself that it was her little black dog Boo Boo. Boo Boo used to follow her around at night. One day Linette was dancing around the house singing a worship song that she had recently written. She was having a great time, totally focused on the Lord. Ro

Fundamentalists love the Book of Job. Besides the fact that it's great literature, who can't empathize with Job's predicament? He is being tested by God. He has lost his children, his goods, and his health. His wife is shrieking at him and his supposed friends, those misguided comforters, are accusing him of being a sinner. Furthermore, Job doesn't understand what is happening with his God. God is behaving in ways that don't make sense. Something is terribly wrong, but what and why? The fact is, Job's friends were standing on solid ground. They were standing on God's Holy, inerrant, unchanging Word. Deuteronomy 27 and 28 assure the reader that bad things happen to the disobedient sinners. Good things happened to the obedient. They had tradition on their side. "Ask the former generations and find out what their fathers learned, for we were born only yesterday and know nothing, and our days on earth are but a shadow. Will they not instruct you and tell yo

"You've got to show them that there's a war going on, and you've got to show that the only way to win that war is through love." Those are the words of God directly and clearly to Darren Wilson, the producer of a movie called The Finger of God. Darren was set on his course to make that movie from two spectacular circumstances. One was that his aunt Patsy and uncle Bob both got gold teeth set into their mouths while at a Pentecostal church service. The other is that an angel named Breakthrough confronted him directly and commanded him to make the movie he was contemplating. That first movie was about miracles, Christian miracles. They included things like gold dust appearing on people as they preached, gemstones appearing in church, and gold teeth appearing in people's mouths. The second movie was first prophesied by Heidi Baker, who told him that God wanted him to go into the darkness to show the light. Later, in a service at the Toronto Airport church, he wa

In Jonathan Welton's book, The School of the Seers, he mentions a medley of passages that are theologically more important that they would seem at first glance. "The Word says that we move: from grace to grace (John 1:16) because grace and truth trump the law given through Moses; strength to strength ( Ps . 84:7); Faith to faith (Rom. 1:17) because the righteous live by faith; glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18) because it is the Spirit that forms the image of Christ in us. Last but not least, he cites Prov. 4:18 which reads "The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, shining brighter and brighter until midday" ( Holmans ). He goes on to state, "The Kingdom of God is never stagnant; it is always progressing forward and taking ground" pp. 173-174. And that is exactly why, in our day and age, when a church or a denomination continues to deny leadership and pastoral roles to women, they are falling prey to a false doctrine, the consequences of which become

Robin Harfouche knew from the time she was little that she had a special gift. She could read people's minds and sometimes tell the future. On one side of her family she had relatives into witchcraft and esp. They called it 'the veil,' and Robin was told that she had it. All throughout her childhood and youth, she believed that it was a gift from God to do good things in the world. On the other side of her family, she had Pentecostal Christians. She wasn't close to them at all and came to her adulthood without ever having gone to church. One day at college, she heard a whistle. She turned around to see a very tall angel who told her that she had been chosen to be a spokesperson for a new religion called New Age. She went on to become a dancer in Hollywood. She got hooked up with the man who managed several major actors, including Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, and Shirley McClain. He pressed her to begin training for her call, so she wound up at a seminar to learn to

Numbers 21:16-18: Then Israel sang this song, "Spring up, O Well, Sing about it, About the well that the princes dug, that the nobles of the people sank--the nobles with scepters and staffs." From there they continued to Beer, the well where the Lord told Moses, "Gather the people together and I will give them water." Do the Israelites sound superstitious? Why would they have the nobles and princes of the people dig a well, which apparently wasn't fully effective, and then sing to it to release the ground water into the well? Who could possibly believe that such an approach could be effective? Never say never. Yesterday my husband and I watched a beautiful documentary about the fall of the Soviet Union. It began with a song! The Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian people were all caught between incursions of the Germans during the war and the Russians afterward. Their occupation seemed endless, and the men and women who disappeared numbered in the thousands. Some

Image by Martin Vorel I just finished Russell Targ ' s autobiographical book , Do You See What I See? Memoir of a Blind Biker . He has three compelling afterlife stories in it. Targ did extensive work on the remote viewing program with the CIA. He is a believer in ESP and a variety of paranormal phenomena. One of his tales involves an Icelandic sailor who drowned decades previously. His body washed ashore and was badly mutilated by birds and dogs. He was buried in the local cemetery. His thigh bone was discovered later and for some reason built into the wall of a home. When the owner of the home was present at a seance, the ghost appeared and indicated that he wanted his thigh bone back. He revealed its location, and sure enough it was there. One must ask, what did he think he was going to do with it? It was claimed from previous seances that he still had a craving for alcohol, tobacco, and colorful speech. If there is a heaven, this guy did not go there. Nor is he locked up in a

I'll pass, thanks. This is an excerpt from Do You See What I See, (2010 ) by physicist and remote viewer Russell Targ: "Mollie also taught me kundalini meditation while I was at Columbia. I practiced this diligently for a year before significantly scaring myself with an out-of-control explosion of energy racing up my spine---a hundred times more powerful than any orgasm. I wasn't prepared for this kind of success. I think of this as "the white hot poker up the ass trick"---very dangerous without an experienced teacher. The revered Indian yogi, Gopi Krishna, describes his own disastrous premature experience in his autobiography, The Awakening of Kundalini. It left him hospitalized and mentally ill with buzzing sounds and flashing lights in his head for years , until he finally integrated the experience---a very scary tale. I wish I had read it before, rather than after, my own adventure in the fire---another glimpse into the unseen world." page 59. I admit,

you're going to hell, and there's nothing I can do about it until you give your life to me." That is an exact quote from Jesus to our friend Rick one day when he threw his Bible down and challenged God. He wasn't a Christian at the time, although he was attending an Assembly of God church. He was there mostly to establish a presence for the men of the church so they would stay away from his cute little wife. Terri was from a long-standing church-attending family. Rick was raised in foster homes after his mother was murdered in his presence. Because his family were itinerant farm workers, Rick and his siblings never went to school until he was around 8 years old. Rick eventually joined the Navy and was deployed on a ship out of San Diego. After several months at sea the ship was coming back to the port. On board, Rick was reading one of the darker passages in the Old Testament. He was horrified at how bloody and vengeful it sounded. "Why would anyone want to serve

Luke 2:14, KJV reads, "Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth good will toward men." The NRSV states, "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!" Other translations suggest that God's peace rests on those humans who have a heart of goodwill. Each translation serves a particular need, but I want to focus on the more inscrutable version, the KJV. Good will toward men in an age where there is war and suffering, plague, famine? What the angels are saying in all of these versions is that God comes to bring us peace. We create our own hell. We abuse each other, but beyond that, we humans have been spiritually mugged by really malevolent, secretive, deceptive, and invisible entities that you can call what you like... the point is that they come to destroy, tempt, steal, betray, and deceive. In my previous blog, I promised to talk about how I can be confident that the being in the white robe who took me out the door is an ange

Did you know that although most angel images are female, angels seem to manifest as genderless or male? This is my own story, or at least the beginning of it.  Janet K. Smith, Ph.D. It was the end of spring semester at the U. of Washington. I was a flaky, insecure 20-year-old art student with an unimpressive GPA who had acquired a summer job in the cafeteria of the Safeco Insurance building. In spite of my Catholic upbringing, I was an agnostic who was actively searching for God. During the previous semester I had taken World History, and one of the requirements was to read "The Sermon on the Mount," three chapters in the book of Matthew. It rocked my world. If there is anything to Christianity, I thought, this is how it should be.  From my Catholic education, I knew the story of St. Augustine, how he heard a child's voice one day saying, "Take up and read. Take up and read." A book was sitting next to him, so he picked it up and read Romans 13:13, admonishing h