God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

  If you have a deliverance story that you would like to share, please contact me by email. I would love to hear it. There is a contact link under my profile. Who can cast out demons? In my most recent post, I wrote about the  Catholic approach  to exorcism as described in the book  Hostageto the Devil ,  written by a former priest who is now an author on Catholic clerical topics. This post is taken from a CD set by  Mark Virkler  and from various other sources, including past conversations and books that are referenced in other of my blog posts. The Catholic method is very ritualistic, utilizing a crucifix, candles, a prayer book, and holy water. The priest wears certain garments and has a specialized team, thus only men actually perform the ritual. And it works if done right. The Protestants can be men or women, clergy or lay person. There are no special garments, holy objects, or ritualized prayer (in most cases). The exorcists or delivere...

Source: George G. Ritchie, Jr., MD, My Life After Dying, Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 1991, 1998. Italics are quotes from the book. In Part I of this series, we followed George Ritchie’s life as he joins the Army, dies of double lobar pneumonia, meets Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and accompanies his mighty Lord on a tour of inter-dimensional realms. When he returned, he married, went on to med school, became an MD, then proceeded to receive a degree in psychiatry. It took him many years to be able to process and describe his experience in 1943 when he was only 20 years old. He describes Jesus more fully in this second book. He had blue eyes and chestnut hair parted in the middle. He was over 6’2”. This was no sweet, gentle Jesus, meek, weak or mild. Here stood a robust male who radiated strength. [Note to the UFO community: Jesus was not an alien.] The young George Ritchie was shown five inter-dimensional realms. The beings in those realms could not see Ritchie and Jes...

From the book, Return from Tomorrow, by George G. Ritchie, 30 th Anniversary Edition, Grand Rapids: Chosen, 2007. In my last post, I blogged about Kat Kerr’s visions of heaven. My conclusions as to the integrity of her story were quite negative. In 2010 I blogged about the story of Dr. George Ritchie, who passed away in 2007. That story rarely receives a visit on my blog, perhaps because his near-death experience happened a generation ago. The event occurred in 1943. His book came out in 1978 and was a sensation for quite a few years. Today, however, few know who he is, in spite of the fact that his NDE experience was particularly enlightening. It occurred long before talking about NDE’s was popular, and way before any medical or professional personality studied these experiences in a scientific way. In my two-part series of 2010, I glossed over the details of Ritchie’s experience because I wanted to contrast his narrative with that of Michael Newton, a hypnotherapist who reg...

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...

In Part 1, we looked at the first 18 verses of Psalm 22 as a lament. It was a perfect picture of Christ’s crucifixion as described in the New Testament. It is one of the most amazing segments of literature ever written. Starting with verse 19, however, an entirely different mood prevails. And yet, the reference to dog, bulls, lions, and the sword makes it clear that part 2 of the psalm fits with verses 1-18. In the later verses of part 1, the sufferer is laid in the dust of death. He dies! So how is he rejoicing in the entire rest of the psalm? 19 But you, Lord , do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. 20 Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. 21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen. I know I’m pushing it here, but I like to think that we are seeing the soul of the not yet resurrected Christ in the above verses. A sword has literally been pushed into his heart to make su...

Although this psalm has a heading that it is a psalm of King David, Israel’s second king who reigned for 40 years in the tenth century BCE, scholars take that with a grain of salt. And they are right. The headings came later, and there is no guarantee that the heading is correct. However, the Psalm 22 resides in a biblical section designated as the “Psalms of David,” and whoever wrote it was in my opinion a “seer” (a Spirit-filled psychic) of high magnitude. Thus, I assume that it was David until someone can prove that it isn’t. According to a passage in 1 Samuel, ecstatic prophecy was a respected phenomenon in those days, even to the point where the person prophesying is laid out helplessly on the ground for long periods of time ( 18:19-24 ). Today’s Pentecostals would have no problem recognizing such an event. Whoever wrote Psalm 22 was possibly in that kind of state, and not only saw it, but lived it. The scholars who analyze Psalm 22 will usually say something like, the sufferer ...

If you have a deliverance story that you would like to share, please contact me by email. I would love to hear it. There is a contact link under my profile. In my most recent post, I wrote about the Catholic approach to exorcism as described in the book Hostageto the Devil , written by a former priest who is now an author on Catholic clerical topics. This post is taken from a CD set by  Mark Virkler  and from various other sources, including past conversations and books that are referenced in other of my blog posts. The Catholic method is very ritualistic, utilizing a crucifix, candles, a prayer book, and holy water. The priest wears certain garments and has a specialized team, thus only men actually perform the ritual. And it works if done right. The Protestants can be men or women, clergy or lay person. There are no special garments, holy objects, or ritualized prayer (in most cases). The exorcists or deliverers come armed with the Bible, either in hand to...

Since I am not an abductee and don’t deal with them in any professional capacity, I cannot claim to be an expert on evading abduction. Once a law enforcement friend asked me what I thought would be a good defense. Since that first question, I’ve read and thought a good deal about the abduction phenomena, and I do have some additional opinions for whatever they are worth. The thoughts below are for those who do not accept the “friendly space brothers” theory of alien interaction. You see yourself as a victim, which in fact, you are. Some have found it effective to call on the name of Jesus Christ or some other saintly entity like a Catholic saint or the Archangel Michael. But the name of Jesus does not work for everyone. Perhaps they are calling on the wrong Jesus. The biblical Jesus is the one who walked on water, raised the dead, forgave the sinners, gave us a new set of life instructions, prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem, warned his followers about the dangers of hell, ...

"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...