UFOs and Apparitions

Tom: Welcome to our ongoing discussion of Dave Hunt’s book Occult Invasion: The Subtle Seduction of the World and Church, which, based upon the information it contains, the occult seduction is less and less subtle – at least that’s the way it seems. If you’re a new listener to the program, it might be helpful if we define for you what we mean by “occultism.” For the most part, it has to do with seeking supernormal powers, abilities, and knowledge – things which are not a part of the physical, chemical makeup of the universe. Occultism includes practicing of magic arts, such as witchcraft, sorcery, demonization, wizardry, and contact with spirit entities through various methods including shamanism and channeling, mediumship, visualization, Eastern meditation, drugs, and so forth.

Dave, do you want to add anything to that definition?

Dave: No, go ahead.

Tom: Okay. Today we’re discussing occultism as it relates to the UFO phenomenon – that is, Unidentified Flying Objects – and the manifestation of religious apparitions, which are closely connected…that is, if we have time. I don’t know if we can get from UFOs to apparitions, but we’ll try.

Dave, if UFOs are in fact physical vehicles of extraterrestrial space travelers, then they really don’t fit into our general definition of occultism. But the evidence is overwhelming that neither UFOs nor their so-called occupants are physical. Isn’t that the case?

Dave: Yeah, that’s the case. In fact, there are a lot of reasons for not believing that they are physical objects. J. Allen Hynek (we quote him in this particular chapter), who has been one of the foremost people working on this topic, he said, “I have come to support less and less the idea that UFOs are ‘nuts and bolts’ spacecraft from other worlds….” Now he gives you a good reason for it. “To me it seems ridiculous that super intelligence would travel great distances to do relatively stupid things like stop cars, collect soil samples, and frighten people…” you know, take people aboard and get their blood samples, and that sort of thing.

It doesn’t make sense to me, Tom, that when you understand how vast this universe is – how far it would be, even if there was a planet somewhere out there in our galaxy, which is 100,000 light years across, that could get here. And we have thousands of these sightings! I mean, you would have to have millions of civilizations out there sending them out. We’re just a tiny dot, and then when they come here, they crash! I mean, they’ve got the technology to get here, then they crash.

Tom: Well, allegedly – allegedly they crash.

Dave: Right. Yeah, so…

Tom: But, Dave, even foundational – or more foundational, it would seem – I remember doing an interview for a video with a scientist at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and his basic premise was, “Well, given all of the planets and stars in the universe, the possibility –or the chance for life forming there, just as it did here by chance, it’s great!” That was their basic premise: that there must be other civilizations out there, because we’re here.

Dave: Yeah, but of course, that’s evolution, and we can dispense with that. From a biblical standpoint – and I presume most of the people listening to us believe the Bible, search the Scriptures daily – they’re not out there. If you believe that life could happen here by chance, then of course it might happen out there. And I…Tom, that life and intelligence would spring spontaneously from dead, empty space – I mean, we know the universe hasn’t been here forever. If the sun had been here forever, it would have burned out by now, right? Second Law of Thermodynamics. We know this thing is winding down, so there was a time when it wasn’t there, and it was brought into existence. “Big Bang”? I mean, where did the energy come from? And why was there a big bang? And then everything has just proceeded, you know, from an explosion. You don’t get intelligence and life and brain waves, you know, and the human brain, which is more complex than any computer. I mean, just the design even of the atoms! The incredible ingenuity! You add another electron in orbit, you’ve got another substance. And a single cell is more complex than New York City. You can have 10,000 chemical reactions going on at once, intricately interrelated in one cell, which is the smallest unit of life mathematically – and I think we’ve given them the mathematics – it’s just absolutely impossible to happen by chance, okay?

So life is designed. The universe is designed. It had a beginning, and whatever began it couldn’t have just been energy. Where did the energy come from? And you don’t get thought, you don’t get intelligence, you don’t get ethics and morals – they don’t develop out of energy! I mean, that’s just as logical as you could possibly be!

So if God put us on this earth, He must have had a reason for it. Well then, God says, “Oh, Adam and Eve blew it. Well, I’ll give it another try, and I’ll try somewhere else,” you know. So we’ve got all these planets out there – God is still trying to come up with some humanoid creature. Any creature less than God will make less than godly decisions.

Tom: But what you’re saying is that UFOs are a reality, so there seem to be some kind of intelligences that are….

Dave: No, no. I’m not talking about UFOs yet. I’m talking about man. Man had to be designed. He’s not an experiment. God doesn’t experiment. He knew that Adam and Eve would sin before He created them. The Bible says that Christ is “as a lamb slain before the foundation of the earth.” And the Bible says, “Known unto God are all His works from the very beginning.”

So all I’m saying is, God didn’t say, “Oh, Adam and Eve messed up, so we’ll try somewhere else.” He doesn’t do that. Furthermore, any human being – any creature that is less than God (and any creature created by God would be less than God – God says, “I am God, there is none else”) would make less than godly decisions. And sin is “coming short of the glory of God.” God created us in His image to reflect His glory, to reflect His love, His purpose, and His compassion, and His purity, and His holiness. Man was supposed to reflect this, and since we’re not God, we sinned.

So any creatures that God would create anywhere, on any other planet – and they couldn’t get there unless they were created by God – would also sin. But the Bible says that Christ is the only sacrifice for sin. There is no…there would be no salvation, because, as we’ve been explaining, Jesus Christ had to become a man – God had to become a man – to redeem us, to pay the penalty for our sins. Well then, if God created other humanoid-like creatures out there, is there another Jesus Christ? No, there’s only one: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” He is the only way: “There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” And anybody else would have to be saved in the same way: the Cross of Christ, the blood of Christ, is the only redemption possible anywhere in this universe. Then these creatures couldn’t be saved, and God isn’t creating more and more out there, and He has no salvation for them. It’s not an experiment.

So the world, the earth, is the center of this universe. It’s to this earth that Christ came. It’s to this earth that Satan comes. It’s to this earth that Antichrist comes. It’s on this earth that Armageddon will be fought (the great battle, and so forth) and the Millennial kingdom will be set up. So they’re not out there, okay? There’s something out there…

Tom: Something’s out there. But, Dave, let’s go back to the so-called scientific perspective – and I say “so-called,” really meaning so-called, because their premise, as I mentioned earlier, is that there must be life out there. Now, you just argued from a biblical standpoint…

Dave: No, not just from a biblical standpoint…

Tom: Well, that’s what you just laid out for us.

Dave: Well, no, but from a logical one, as well.

Tom:  All right. Let’s go along that line and a scientific standpoint.

Dave: From a scientific standpoint. I said, Tom, you don’t get life and intelligence from dead, empty space. You don’t get thought and morals from an explosion – from a big bang –  and furthermore, we wouldn’t even know where the energy came from. Something had to be here before, okay? Before everything. Because, as we said, the universe is running down like a clock. The universe could not have been here forever. Only God created it. I mean, we’re personal beings. You don’t get personal beings out of an explosion.

So a personal Creator created us. That’s scientific. Mathematically we’ve laid it out on this program before. The chance for even the basic enzymes to come into existence – the basic enzymes necessary – you have to have enzymes before life can even function. And for the basic enzymes to be brought into existence by chance, that’s 10^-40,000. That’s been worked out mathematically. That’s impossible. That’s one chance in 1 with 40,000 zeros. So, all I’m saying is scientifically, mathematically, philosophically, logically, God created this universe. God created man. God created Adam and Eve. And He knew they would sin, so He’s not creating other beings out there.

And then I moved on to the fact that there would be no redemption for them. And the Bible bears that out.

Now, of course, Tom, as you know, there are a lot of other reasons why these are not physical beings. We’ve clocked them, for example, on radar doing 7,000 mph and making a right angle turn without slowing down! A physical object couldn’t do that. It would fall apart. You had a whole SWAT team, an entire SWAT team in Georgia – in Atlanta, Georgia – one evening saw one as big as a football field…I mean, it was huge. Lit up, it was hovering right over their heads. They all saw it. They were witnesses. And suddenly, whssht! Off the thing goes, but there’s no “whssht.” It doesn’t make a sound. Physical objects, and this has been observed a number of times, do not break through the sound barrier without a sonic boom, without some sound.

A lot of reasons why we know these are not physical. For example, Jacques Vallée, who I at least consider to be one of the foremost UFOlogists, foremost experts – he’s an astrophysicist and a computer….

Tom: For some of our listeners who have seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the character in here – the scientist in there, actually, it was François Truffaut – that character was based on the man we’re talking about, Jacques Vallée.

Dave: Jacques Vallée, the real-life scientist.

Tom: Right.

Dave: And he’s been investigating them for a long time, and he says they’re not physical. And furthermore, he says, they are psychologically setting us up for some delusion that is too horrible even to imagine as yet. These are not physical objects…

Tom: Well, Dave, somebody’s thinking – you know, who may be thinking ahead of us, or somewhere in what we’re dealing with here: Well, where are they from? Scientists are saying, “Well, they may be from another galaxy.” Or “They may be from the end of the galaxy.” Or so on and so forth. But that presents problems for physical entities – to extraterrestrials, correct?

Dave: Well, as we said, they don’t come zooming through hyperspace with all of this technology and then crash on this earth. They’re not so stupid, as J. Allen Hynek said. They don’t have to keep abducting people, and taking samples of their blood, and their tissue, and so forth. I mean, how many times do they have to do this? But you’ve got literally thousands of abductees out there. And they don’t seem to have a…in fact, I do not know a case – there may be some case, but I don’t know a case – of a conscious memory. Somebody literally remembered this. No, they had some psychological problems, they had some nightmares, and whatever. They went to a psychiatrist. He regressed them back into the past, and then they came out with these memories.

Now, you had a couple of scientists – and the names have escaped me at the moment – at Cal State Long Beach. And they did experiments with hypnosis, and they found that you can replicate under hypnosis almost anything. They would put people under hypnosis, in a deep hypnotic state, who had never had anything to do with UFOs – I mean, as far as they knew. I mean, these were just random samples, and they suggest to them: “You are being approached by a UFO. What do you know? Tell us. Explain it.” And they come out with exactly the same thing. Or they tell someone else, “You are dying.” And they come out with the same thing. I think the title of this chapter, in fact, is “UFOs, ETIs, and Near-Death Experiences”, because they are very similar.

And they found that under a hypnotic state, something happens. You can come up with memories of a life you’ve never lived, and yet they go back and check that little village that you’re describing in India 500 years ago – what do you know? It’s accurate! So you have come under a state of consciousness – you’re in a state of consciousness – where the person who is hypnotizing you can make you think anything! So you’ve opened yourself up to control by another mind. Now, what then would prevent another mind other than the hypnotist from intervening in this process and giving you these memories, and so forth? I’m convinced from my investigation that this is a demonic delusion.

But, Tom, I think it’s setting us up for something. And you remember that Jimmy Carter, when he was president – if I can find…we quote the statement here…. You remember, this was the Voyager spacecraft back there in 1977, and there was a gold record fixed to it that was on the exterior of it, in fact. And here’s what Jimmy Carter said: “We cast this message into the cosmos. Of the 200,000,000 stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some, perhaps many, may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts the Voyager, here’s our message.”

Let me stop there, for a minute, Tom. I don’t want to be seeming to demean any of the great accomplishments. It’s fantastic that we’ve gotten to the moon. It’s fantastic that we’ve sent this probe out into space. But just to be honest about it, Tom, we don’t have a space program. We’re like an ant that climbs up on a blade of grass and yells back to the other ants, “I’m exploring the world!” He hasn’t even begun to explore the lawn, much less the block, much less the town, the state, you know.

Tom: Dave, let me interject something here. We put all of this together. We’ve talked about SETI. You mentioned the other day that that’s not the name of the program. But it’s our – not only what Carter did, but it’s our way of contacting other “entities” out there. Now, what’s the fastest thing that we have in terms of a physical object? How fast can it travel?

Dave: I think about 30,000 mph.

Tom: But let’s say we could…

Dave: It would take us 90,000 years to get to the nearest star where there might be some…

Tom: Ninety thousand years…

Dave: …other planets. Tom, that’s why I’m saying we don’t have a space program.

Tom: Right. I’m underscoring it.

Dave: Because our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 100,000 light years across. Traveling at the speed of light, it would take you 100…. So just to get…it would take you 1,000 years….

Tom: If it were possible for a physical object to travel at the…

Dave: You can’t do it! I mean, it is so far beyond us, so we…

Tom: So how far would we get?

Dave: We’re talking about thousands and thousands of years just to get to the…you know, even if you could zip this up to hyper-drive, or whatever they call it. But then it’s a million and half years – light years – to the next galaxy. And there are billions of galaxies. And we talk about a space program! I’m sorry. I said we’re like an ant crawling up on a blade of grass and yelling back and saying he’s exploring the world. Now, I don’t want to demean what we’ve done in getting to the moon…

Tom: Right, because a lot of technology – helpful technology’s come out of it.

Dave: But in the vastness of space, Tom, we haven’t even begun to touch the fringe of this, okay? So anyway, Jimmy Carter is hoping that there might be somebody they’ll make contact with. Talk about – you know, it’s worse than a needle in a haystack. It’s a needle in a world of haystacks.

Tom: But it doesn’t even reach…the needle doesn’t even get into the haystack!

Dave: No, no. But anyway, here’s…he goes on, and he says, “This is a present from a small distant world: a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings.” They put all of this on this gold record. “We are attempting to survive our times so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.” Now, Tom…

Tom: Dave, hold on a second. This is a physical object entering into space. Now, we just made the statement that…

Dave: Entering into space, Tom – it hasn’t even gotten there. They may have left the solar system; I’m not sure. I think – I think they may have gotten beyond the solar system.

Tom: But even our radio waves. We have a lot of communication – a lot of things that have been set up and are out there somewhere. But how far out there are they? I mean, I think you have one statement in your book, you said, “It would take 1,000 years for Earth’s radio signals to penetrate a mere 1 percent of our galaxy, and another 1,000 years for a reply to reach us. I mean, my memory’s not that good. I can’t remember a thing from week to week, let alone 1,000 years.

Dave: Tom, I hope we’re not offending anybody out there listening. What we’re saying is if you don’t believe in God, then they’re trying very hard to escape accountability to God. Therefore, there must be, you know, “This could have happened by accident, and life came into existence by chance over billions of years, so there must be some others out there.” But, Tom, it’s ludicrous. I’m going to sit around 1,000 years and wait for, you know, another 1,000…

Tom: If that were possible, which it’s not…

Dave: …to get a reply from the…I haven’t even begun to get out there! This is so vast. It’s an idea that has obsessed these people. We’re spending billions to try, somehow, to establish that there’s life out there. Why? I mean, God, the Creator of the universe…I mean, Tom, I almost go mad about this! The Creator of the universe has written His Word to communicate with us. He loves us. He came into this earth and became a man, died for our sins, and we’re spending all this time trying to communicate with some extraterrestrials out there. Even Christians neglect God’s Word. That’s why we try to say let’s search the Scriptures daily and get to know Him.

Tom: Dave, why this is a topic for a program like this is because not only does it deal with occultism, which we’re going to establish – we can’t do it, we have little time left today – but in the weeks ahead, we’ll cover it more and more. But this is a religious delusion. When we begin to talk about these entities, so-called contacts, we’ve established that there is a reality in relation to communication of some form.

Dave: Oh, yeah.

Tom: But the content of that communication is very religious, and very anti-Christian. Why is that?

Dave: Tom, I was one of the invited…well, I was a panel member at a UFO congress: When Cosmic Cultures Meet. This was in Washington, DC. There was some very wealthy money behind it. There were government people there. There were a lot of abductees. There were people there who talked to trees. There was a psychiatrist from Harvard University who has regressed these people back, and he really believes, you know, that he comes out with factual data. Tom, it was quite an experience for me. And I was the only one involved in this conference who wanted to give them the facts, the truth, from the Word of God. But they were off on these altered states and this communication with these entities, and so forth.

It is religious, Tom. It is anti-Christian. The whole idea is to escape accountability to God and to escape the redemption that is offered to us through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who paid the penalty for our sins. And I saw that, in talking with these people – I don’t know whether what I had to say made any impact…I think it did on some of them.

But we’re faced with an astonishing situation where man wants to believe this lie and persists in it. And rationally, logically, scientifically, biblically, it doesn’t make sense.

Tom: Right. And the thrust of this, Dave, as our listeners will find – we’ll see, more and more, this is a spiritual…part of the spiritual delusion, and we’re going to address that next week and maybe the week after.