God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

  Image created by the author using ChatGTP. The young women depicted do not resemble the persons mentioned in the story, but all else is spot on. This is my own true story. It was the end of the spring semester at the University 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. Despite my Catholic upbringing, I was an agnostic who was actively searching for God. The previous semester, I had taken World History. 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 hi...

  Howard Pitman’s Near Death Experience, August 3, 1979 I first heard part of this story on www.theedgeam.com web radio station, but I found myself frustrated because the interviewer had to pass on many questions sent in by the listeners as Howard spoke. It interrupted the flow of the story and, in my view, wasted time. So on June 17, 2006, I called him in New Orleans and got the rest of it. I wasn’t so interested in all of his theology, which could be his own interpretation of the Bible, as I was his actual experience. At the time of his shave with death, Rev. Pittman had been a preacher for over 30 years and a foster parent of 32 children besides his own three. His life had been full of good Christian works. He attended a typical fundamentalist Baptist church that likes to emphasize the positive side of the Gospel message, God’s love and mercy. He had also been a policeman in New Orleans, and had attended seminary. Like many fundamentalists, he was laden with theological certaint...

(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...

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, angel 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, Bosnia and Heregovina, where Catholics and the curious gather to experience frequent apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, pilgrims would often discover that the silver-colored chains on their rosaries had turned to gold. There is 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 phenome...

Is the universe dangerous or benevolent? I had a discussion with my family once about whether the universe was basically benevolent or dangerous. My United Methodist mother-in-law and my Unitarian sister-in-law voted for benevolent, because they have always been nice people and feel blessed and protected. They are projecting their world view and experience into a cosmic philosophy. They've never been shot or raped or robbed at knife point.  I took the opposite view because, although I haven't personally experienced the above crimes, I'm aware how fortunate I am that I haven't, and I attribute a most of my good fortune to having been religious in one way or another most of my life, meaning I also feel blessed and protected, but some of that is cultural. I've never lived in a high crime area. I also believe that, although God does not spare Christians all loss, pain, and grief, our lot could be a lot worse without His presence in our lives. We talked about demons and ...

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...

"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...

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...