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Are UFOs Real? Some of Them.

Are UFOs Real? Some of Them.

Last updated on: December 17, 2017 at 8:00 pm by Kermit Zarley

Are UFOs Real? Some of Them. 2017-12-17T20:00:13-07:00 Kermit Zarley

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The New York Times reported today that the U.S. Defense Department’s annual $600 billion budget has $22 million earmarked for investigating UFOs. What! I thought we ended that inquiry when the U.S. Air Force shut down its 27-year old Project Blue Book in 1969. (I was an Air Force reservist from 1965 through 1971.)

Not so. The U.S. government’s investigation of UFOs was somewhat reborn in 2007 when Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, then the Senate majority leader, got a similar program started as part of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency. It supposedly lasted five years and then ended. Not so, again. It’s funding ended in 2012; but this year’s Pentagon budget renewed funding for this program with the $22 million figure.

With Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force had investigated just about all reported sightings of supposed UFOs in the U.S. during that 27-year period of time and a few years before it. The total number of recorded sightings was about 12,000. The main reason the Air Force shut down this program was that neither the U.S. government nor its Defense Department could come to any solid conclusion about these UFO sightings except to say that natural phenomenon could explain most of them and about 700 of them were unexplainable. So, it was concluded that continuing Project Blue Book was a waste of time and thus taxpayer dollars.

I’ve been interested in UFOs since I was a teenager. It started when my very sane uncle, Victor Zarley, a Unity Church pastor (formerly Nazarene), began telling us kinfolk that he had had multiple UFO experiences. They included him seeing aliens, which he called “the little people,” and boarding their aircraft. My uncle eventually accompanied famed Maxwell Maltz as a public speaker at conferences. Vic would speak about his experiences with these aliens. Maltz was an American cosmetic surgeon and author of the bestsellling, self-help book Psycho-Cybernetics (1960). It launched him into becoming a pioneer in helping people improve their self image.

In 1979, I met and talked privately with Gene Roddenberry, the original creator of the still hugely popular Star Trek television series. Who was more interested in aliens than Mr. Roddenberry? (See my post entitled “My Talk with Gene Rodenberry about Aliens, God, and Sci-Fi Stuff.”) I have a chapter about this in a yet unpublished book manuscript that I intend to be part of my Still Here series on biblical eschatology. The first two books of this series are published: The Third Day Bible Code (2006) and Warrior from Heaven (2009).

I’ve been a serious student of Bible prophecy for over fifty years. My take on UFOs is that some of these sightings are real and thus cannot be explained as natural phenomena. But what is the correct explanation of them? I believe they are angels, called “Watchers.” That’s what I told Mr. Roddenberry. Gene didn’t like that answer. Yet we had a very cordial and stimulating conversation about this subject that I find very interesting. I hope to tell more in my future publications.

Incidentally, the Bible reveals that angels are spirit beings, thus not physical. Yet they can manifest themselves to be visually seen by humans. When they do, they always appear human-like.

The Bible’s book of Daniel relates, “there was a holy watcher, coming down from heaven” (Daniel 4.13). He inflicted King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon with a rare mental disorder that modern psychology calls lycanthropy. The deluded person thinks he or she is an animal, or desires to be animal, and therefore lives like one.

The Daniel text says God sent the angel to do this to King Nebuchadnezzar because of his arrogance (Daniel 4). But first the king had a dream about what would happen to him. In this dream he was told, “the Most High [God] has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals, and gives it to whom he will” (v. 25). The text says the king heard a voice from heaven saying, “You shall be made to eat grass like the oxen, and seven times [years] shall pass over you, until you have learned that the Most High has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals and gives it to whom he will” (v. 32). We are told the king recovered seven years later and issued a statement about his experience.

The watcher(s) are mentioned three times in this Daniel narrative (Daniel 4.13, 17, 23). Interestingly, it says, “The sentence is rendered by decree of the watchers” (v. 17). This is immediately repeated as follows: “the decision is given by order of the holy ones.” Here, the watchers are described as “holy ones.” They are clearly God’s angels.

This text in Daniel reveals what Sir Isaac Newton–the great mathematician and scientist, discoverer of gravity, and a very devout Christian and student of Bible prophecy–wrote, “God does not do what he can delegate to others.” That is, God allowed these holy watchers to devise a plan to mentally afflict King Nebuchadnezzar.

The Bible distinguishes angels in various categories. Its primary category is that angels belong either to God or Satan–the devil and arch-enemy of God. That is, there are angels of God and angels of Satan. Thus, there is a great battle being waged in not only this universe but heaven also between God and Satan, and God’s angels against Satan’s angels (e.g., Revelation 12.7-9). I have a chapter specifically about this battle in the above-cited, unpublished book.

But some of Satan’s angels are watchers, also. I don’t know if some of the many UFO sightings are of God’s angel watchers or Satan’s angel watchers. And incidentally, UFOs are sighted all over the world. Some of the more interesting accounts are about pilots visually seeing, and being picked up on radar, and then chasing UFOs in their aircrafts.

I suspect that both types of angels are very interested in what goes on in the universe with human beings. Regarding God’s angels Jesus said, “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents”on earth (Luke 15.10). And the author of the biblical book of Hebrews states, “Are not [God’s] angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those [humans] who are to inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1.14). And the Apostle Peter writes that the “good news” that is proclaimed among human beings about Jesus “by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven” are the “things into which angels long to look,” that is, God’s angels (Peter 1.12).

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