God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

These particular stories are ones that I have experienced myself or have heard from the people who experienced them. Of course one could say that any book written as a testimony of miracles, haunting, or alien abductions is a first hand account, but in this particular post I will deal only with unpublished anecdotes rather than books. A Lutheran pastor confronts demons in a multiple personality client This story was heard recently in an adult Sunday School class in our Lutheran church in Citrus Heights, CA. Pastor Harry, who is retired now, found himself in an uncomfortable situation when some of the personalities in a woman with multiple personalities seemed to be demonic. He knew nothing of exorcism and little of psychology so he tried to pass the woman onto the psychologist. That man, however, demurred, since the demons were more open with the minister. “What do I do with them?” asked the minister. “Talk to them,” said the psychologist. So he did his best, setting up a sort...

Sometimes the evangelical doctrine of “inerrancy” (there are no errors in the Bible and all ideas presented reflect the thinking of God) snares the church in some sticky wickets. For example, the Christian church, the Body of Christ, the light on a hilltop, the salt of the earth, the purveyor of the love of God, finds that to be true to inerrant Scripture it must suppress women. Why? Because Adam was born first and Eve sinned first. That puts women beneath men forever, until the Second Coming. They must also bash gay people as sinners worse than any on earth . . . worse than the philandering minister, the heterosexual predator teaching Sunday School, and the lukewarm Church of Laodicea whom Jesus threatened to reject. It is not the lackadaisical believers that will bring a curse on the U.S., it is the gays getting married. For many years Christians felt they had to burn blaspheming heretics at the stake. They all did it, Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed Protestants, the Puritans… ...

In the first three parts of the Osborne story, we learned about Myra’s two life-changing visions of Jesus Christ, her sensitivity to ethereal realms, Charles’s Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and his experience with deliverance ministry. In this last section, Charles discusses gold dust, angels feathers, Marian apparitions, aliens, and his brother’s NDE. Gold dust Our discussion of gold dust began when I mentioned the fact that in Medjugorje, pilgrims would often discover that the silver-colored chains on their rosaries had turned to gold. There is also a DVD movie called “Finger of God,” by Darren Wilson, that documents testimony of gold fillings appearing in teeth during a worship service. Wilson has also filmed Christian speakers who manifest gold dust all over themselves as they preach. At that point, Charles had his own gold dust story to share, since the phenomenon sometimes occurs in his church. I asked if he had ever gotten it on film. "No, because that’s never been ou...

In my first post on this topic, Myra shared the two visions she had of Jesus Christ that changed her from a flaky, pot-smoking teen to a disciple of the Lord. In Part II, Charles described what it was like to be slain onto the sawdust floor of a revival tent and speak in tongues for a half hour. The stories in today’s post will not disappoint. Charles explains: "We went to London, our first and only visit, and we were touring the Anglican sites there. We went to Westminster Abbey, and we were really shocked that it was like a big cemetery. We didn’t know that we were going to walk by so many tombs. And we went into a side chapel called St. [?] Chapel where it was quiet, and we were able to sit there and pray for a while. We were just being quiet and praying, and I looked over at Myra, and when I did, I saw a woman standing in front of her in a long dress, and her right hand was kind of raised with the index finger extended. And um, she was speaking to Myra, and Myra was bei...

In my last post, I published a brief obituary for Rev. Charles Osborne, rector of Light of Christ Anglican church in Marietta, GA. I got their contact info through Kathie Walters, an evangelist/speaker. In my last post, Myra Osborne told her own story. My first contact with Charles was an email in which he described a séance that he initiated just for fun. His brother joined him in that venture. Unfortunately, shortly after I interviewed the Osbornes by phone (and after I had digitally saved and transferred the interview) my hard drive fried, and that email was annihilated. What I gathered from the transcript of the interview is that Charles developed a psychic capability, while his brother became haunted in a terrifying way. Neither of them nor their parents were Christians at the time. Later in life, both received the grace of Christ into their lives. Myra has a gift of being taken “into the Spirit,” a meditative state in which spiritual realities become manifest. She claims...

Designed by Myra Osborne, Light of Christ Anglican Church, Marietta, Georgia Interview with Osbornes, Part I, Myra's Story I got their name from an evangelist-speaker named Kathie Walters whose news list is full of miraculous stories, some written by her and some shared in emails from churches where she has preached. I spoke with Charles and Myra Osborne by phone for almost two hours in early July 2009. In just over a year later, this amazing man, who was such a delight to converse with, tragically passed away. Here is an excerpt from Rev. Charles E. Osborne’s obituary: "Osborne, Rev. Charles Edward, 56, of Kennesaw, GA, passed away on Friday, September 17, 2010. Born in Wilkesboro, NC, Rev. Osborne earned his Master in Divinity with Honors from the General Theological Seminary in New York City. He served as Curate at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Anchorage, KY, and was a Priest at Grace Episcopal Church in Sheboygan, WS. He was currently the Rector at Light of ...

No, I’m not talking about magic beans that morph into evil pumpkins. I’m writing here about a family that in 1970 moved into a fixer upper in Maryland. At that time, they were a normal family of five, a father with wonderful construction skills, an attractive, pleasant mother, two boys, Bill and Bobby, and a girl named Patti. The problem was that there was already a family of four living in the house, but you couldn’t see them, so for a few years the family lived in denial regarding the deleterious effects these entities were having on every member of the family. The mother, Patricia Bean, was the first to recognize that the family ghost, nicknamed Henry, wasn’t just a pleasant old former owner. The poltergeist activity accelerated quickly from occasional strange noises to constant banging and racket every night. One night in 1971 sister Patti felt something grab her leg that actually left red marks. (You can read another story of a leg being grabbed here .) The father’s construc...

My friend urged me to write about the whispers. My approach to biblical interpretation has helped her resolve a weighty load of frustration and unanswered question about how to deal with Bible conundrums. She has never been content to believe something just because, and neither have I. We have to begin with the understanding that God is, that he is locatable rather than being an all-pervasive, non-localized force. He may well be omni-present, but he is not merely a conglomeration of all things everywhere. And he is logical. He is compassionate. His reason is beyond ours, but not in the sense of it being incomprehensible. He reveals himself to mankind bit by bit because the gap between his understanding and ours is so immense. He steps into our primitive world with our archaic customs and knowledge and changes us little by little. Change is always difficult. It’s frightening and dangerous and requires adaptation and care to make sure that it is a change for the better. It always ...

"Oh, no, they were surely not benign. I had, of course, long ago given up any idea of these trespassers being “friendly.” However, what the man from Texas spoke about and drew for me during our regression session, almost tore me apart. His testimony certainly ripped up many of my most cherished notions of the alien intruders. When he made the drawing of a reptilian humanoid alien, the drawing was so awful, the image the most frightening revelation I’ve ever had. The drawing triggered fear and terror within me. It seemed too real. "That was in 1988. For the first time I was truly frightened of the aliens because the picture he handed me brought into reality the fact that a species exists which in some way, degrades every human being alive." Barbara Bartholic, with Peggy Fielding, in Barbara: The Story of a UFO Investigator , 2004, p. 154. (Barbara worked with famed researcher Jacques Vallee. She regressed many abductees, including Ted Rice, whose story is told in Masqu...