God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

Pastor Mark Welch of The Pointe Church in Antelope, CA once shared a story about an aged pastor in Michigan who was being honored as the original founder of a church there. At a community meal, that old pastor wound up seated across from young Mark. The man asked Mark general questions as to where he was from and who he was. Mark told him about his father and grandfather who were pastors. Finally the old man began to tell a story. When he was a young man, he felt the call to be an evangelist. In those days, what you did was rent a huge circus tent and set it up wherever you could. People just showed up and the event ran as long as it needed. One time the evangelist came to a farm to ask permission to use the land. The farmer agreed, but warned, "Don't expect me to show up." The evangelist said that was fine. One night the farmer did show up with several friends. They were rowdy and drunk and rude. They heckled the minister as he preached. Suddenly, God spoke to the eva...

Scripture quotes are from biblegateway.com, NKJV. Whenever LORD is all caps, the actual Hebrew is the name of God, usually pronounced and spelled Yahweh or Jehovah in English. When written Lord, the word is Adonai, meaning Lord, our Lord, or my Lord. "Mary, did you know t hat your Baby Boy will calm the storm with His hand? Did you know t hat your Baby boy has walked where angels trod? When you kiss your little Baby you kissed the face of God?"   Lyrics by Clay Aiken   I highly recommend reading Part 1 before proceeding to this post. In that post, we reviewed the groundwork leading up to the amazing Isaianic prophecy in Isaiah 9 of the Old Testament. We saw that in the late 8th century BC, King Pekah of northern Israel conspired with King Rezin of neighboring Syria to attack King Ahaz of Judah. In fact, the Syrian troops were gathering in central Israel, referred to as Ephraim. This intelligence put all of Judah into a panic. The prophet Isaiah met King Ahaz on th...

Whenever LORD is all caps, the actual Hebrew is the name of God, usually pronounced and spelled Yahweh or Jehovah in English. When written Lord, the word is Adonai, meaning Lord, our Lord, or my Lord.   "Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water? Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?" Lyrics by Mark Lowry The looming Syro-Ephaimite War The prophet Isaiah lived in Israel approximately seven centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ. He had a long ministry, covering the reigns of four kings of the little nation of Judah. During the reign of the third king, Ahaz, Isaiah had a most remarkable vision of a special child that would be born in his lifetime. That child would be a sign to Judah and its capitol Jerusalem that the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia would not totally vanquish Ahaz’s kingdom. Nor would a confederacy of Syria and Northern Israel succeed in breaking into the city of Jerusalem, plundering its weal...

I recently watched a video of a Muslim man who converted to Christianity after reading a Bible and seeing a vision of Jesus. Here is the teaser from Charisma News: "Kamran grew up in a Muslim family, but despite their lackadaisical religious practice, Kamran dove deeper into Islam. ' I became [a] very, very, very strict Muslim for the thirst and hunger I had for [the] creator of the world,' the man said. 'I used to think his name was Allah ... and I strongly believed all his rules.'  Kamran’s passion for the creator, to do what is right and go to heaven, led him to dozens of Islamic books, as he believed he would 'get extra credit' for reading the Quran multiple times. 'I was always so hungry, thirsty, desperate to get to know God.'  When he went to church, Kamran saw a man standing behind the pastor, and he knew right away that this man was Jesus.'" You can hear Kamran’s testimony here: http://www.charismanews.com/culture/46125-wat...

In my previous post, I shared the story in which Carol McElheney apparently got caught in an unpleasant time slip involving a town where she and other family members used to live. It happened in 2006 in Riverside, California. After I posted her story, she sent me an email describing a near death experience she had in 2008. We talked more about it by phone and she gave me permission to share that event. Carol was a park ranger peace officer who patrolled the American River Parkway on her trained police horse. She has also been a Sacramento Reserve Deputy Sheriff and a CSI. In 2008, she and her family were camping at Shaver Lake in Fresno County, southern California. Around 10 am, the family members were out on the lake. Carol was alone in camp when she felt a pain in her head so sharp that she thought she had been shot. Her vision began to go, alerting her that something was seriously wrong. She knew that at the time she was at risk for a stroke due to too much weight and high blood...

My interview with Carol Chase McElheney One has to get to the monthly Sacramento Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) meeting at least a half hour early to find a good seat, so it’s an opportunity to get to know those who are seated close by. That’s where I heard the time-slip tale of Carol Chase McElheney. When I asked her about it at break time, she referred me to Jason Offutt’s rendition of the event at mysteriousuniverse.org , (update: today you have to pay to subscribe) which was the result of a Skype interview. His account read very much like what she described to her seatmates today, so I have referred to his version for facts that I could not recall from having heard the story firsthand. In March, 2006, Carol, along with her dog, was driving from her home in San Bernardino to the sheep dog trials in Perris, California. Topping a hill, she saw an exit sign to nearby Riverside. Her family had a long history there, going back into the 1800’s. Her grandparents were buried in the local ce...

Here are three testimonies of Muslims who had revelations and visions of Jesus Christ. Each is about half an hour long. The first is Afshin Javid, an Iranian who joined Hezbollah Jihad in order to please Allah. He says that there is not one verse in the Quran about Mohammed being in heaven because all are waiting for the final judgement day, but after two weeks of asking God to show him what to do, Jesus Christ came to him in prison and said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” He shocked this young man by telling him that he is forgiven, and that just for asking, not for doing expected religious deeds like killing people or praying 5 times a day. Jesus told him that he could forgive other Muslim people, but someone needs to go tell them. https://youtu.be/NXR3N2C2k0w The second is Jerry Rassamni, a Druse Muslim, born in Lebanon. He read the Bible and realized that there are many names of Allah in the Quran, but not one is about love and not one is Father. Jerry saw the...

Other than the Bible, of course. A friend recently recommended a book called Making Sense of the Bible, by Adam Hamilton. It sounded intriguing, so I ordered it, read it, and was amazed. The author is a United Methodist pastor, a founder of Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. The jacket blurb states, “The church is well known for connecting with agnostics, skeptics, and spiritual seekers. In 2012, it was recognized as the most influential mainline church in America, and Hamilton was asked by the White House to deliver the sermon at the inaugural Obama prayer service.” His church has 18,000 members, and no wonder! The book is divided into two parts, but at the end of Part 1 there is a hermeneutic section that I intend to present here in detail. Part 1 is the stuff one learns in seminary: who wrote the Old and New Testaments? When were they written? Which books made it into the Bible, and why were other books rejected? He writes extensively about the Bible authors, Paul, ...

(See Dec. 15, 2012 for other random stories of the paranormal that I've heard firsthand.) At a recent Sacramento MUFON meeting a gentleman sitting next to me named Steve shared the fact that he is sure he is an abductee because he awakes in the morning with scratches and marks on his body. He spent many years in a fundamentalist Christian church and still considers himself to be born again. Whenever he has doubts about his faith, he reminds himself that he has often blocked paranormal manifestations by using the name of Jesus. The homes of abductees are often ‘haunted’ by random poltergeist manifestations. He was once using a Ouija Board with a friend. He thought she was pushing the pointer, she thought he was. When they asked a question, there was no hesitation; the pointer went straight to the answer. He finally asked, “Are you malevolent?” It shot over to “Yes.” That was the last time he used a Ouija. As I listened to his many stories, I kept wondering why, if he is a Christi...

What was the Hebrew author trying to accomplish? Having looked at the Genesis account and compared it to the Ziusudra Epic, what are we to do with it who live by the Bible and acknowledge its inspiration? I suggest we try to walk in the shoes of the earthly author and try to understand what his motivations may have been. He lived in the era of the kings of Israel. No, Moses did not write the book of Genesis. The phrase, …such and such happened when there were no kings in Israel is oft repeated. That is a clue that the book was written when there were kings in Israel. He lived in a polytheistic world with goddesses, ghosts, snakes, sacred gardens, and sacred trees [beneath which blasphemy and unholy arts were practiced]. Our author knew beyond all shadow of a doubt that participating in those customs brought spiritual death to the worshiper. Many of his own people followed those very gods. The Canaanites legends of Baal and the monstrous world of Mesopotamian deities were well-kn...

Where did the ark land? In two recent posts I discussed Robert Best’s self-published book Noah’s Ark and the Ziusudra Epic, 1999, distributed by Eisenbrauns. This post follows on those and it is recommended that the reader refer to them before reading this one. For this post I also referred to Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ANET). In the original Sumerian epic, Ziusudra is a king in Mesopotamia (ANET, 42; Best, 256), but most of the narrative has been destroyed. According to one of the Sumerian King Lists, (ANET, 265) the king in Sumer at the time of the Flood was Ubar-Tutu, King of Shuruppak. In another, it’s Ziusudra (Best, 125). He probably lived sometime in the third millennium BCE (Best offers a flood near Shuruppak in 2900 BCE.) In the assembly of the gods, Anu and Enlil commanded that the kingship and rule of mankind should come to an end. Other deities lament, and Enki warns Ziusudra to build a boat to save himself and the seed of an...