“Beyond the Ancient Aliens”: A Review of Alien Scriptures: Extraterrestrials in the Holy Bible (3rd Ed.), by Rev. Michael J. S. Carter

 

 (2013). ISBN: 9781790654253

A few months ago, I reviewed the most recent book by this articulate and passionate author. Initiation: The Spiritual Transformation of the Experiencer is a handbook for those who have had alien contact, or know someone who has. Reverend Carter’s insights into the nature of these extraterrestrial beings is refreshing, comforting, and enlightening. If the field of UFOlogy is to evolve out of split camps, ridicule, sloppy investigations, click-baiting, and a false narrative of fear (such as the one being put forth in the supposed Disclosure of the past few years), then we need to hear more from scholars and experiencers such as Reverend Carter.

Written eight years before Initiation, Alien Scriptures: Extraterrestrials in the Holy Bible also takes as its basis the author’s contactee experiences, which set him on his path to combine theology, spirituality, and UFOlogy to better understand what was happening to himself and others, and how long and why it had been happening. Although the title specifically mentions the Holy Bible—Carter’s area of most expertise because of his Christian schooling and study—Alien Scriptures covers a much broader base, from which the book, and therefore the reader, immeasurably benefit.

After sharing his contactee experiences (this book being the first time he publicly did so), Carter gives us an overview of what to expect by way of an Introduction, which shares statistics about just how many people believe in and have experienced visitors from other worlds/dimensions (they have increased even more in the ensuing almost decade). It also gives an overview of UFOs in popular culture. This survey of documentaries, films, and TV shows includes Ancient Aliens, on which the reverend has been a popular and longtime contributor.

Chapter 1 outlines some of the major UFO events in recent history. The survey starts with Kenneth Arnold’s sighting, which birthed the term “flying saucers”; the Roswell incident; UFOs over Washington, DC in 1952; and the famous incident of the Phoenix Lights in Arizona in March 1997 (I arrived there ten days later, and people were still talking about it), among several others. Carter then examines the longtime US government cover-ups, false flags, and distortions and denials of these and other cases, from which we are still suffering today. This obfuscation is important because many, many people over the years have lost their jobs, their minds, and/or their reputations because of the lack of open discussion about the phenomena in America.

With a solid base presented, Carter moves back in time to “UFOs in Antiquity.” Here he discusses famous religious paintings that appear to contain flying saucers, and quotes from the Roman Catullus, Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great regarding what sound very much like experiences with UFOs. It is here that Carter moves to other religions and spiritual systems, pulling in the Mayan Popol Vuh, and the Hindu Vedas, Ramayana, and Mahabharata. If you are familiar with Ancient Aliens or the theory on which the show is based, these texts are explored time and again because they speak of compelling phenomena such as the vimana, a “flying celestial vehicle.” And this was in is 3000 BCE!

For those most interested in UFO phenomena in the bible, Carter does not disappoint. He starts with Genesis in the Old Testament, with fascinating insights into the Nephilim, Elohim, and architect of the Sumerian Annunaki theory Zachariah Sitchen’s early statements that mistranslations were vastly changing the meaning and implications of these words. Carter then moves on to the Tower of Babel, Exodus, and the nature of Yahweh, especially the often remarked-upon image of the angry, vengeful father who seems less like a God and more like an interstellar dictator.

For me, one of the central mysteries of the Old Testament is prophets like Ezekiel and Elijah and the nature of their supposedly angelic visitors. There is clearly technology described in these passages, and the angels sound more like the interstellar travelers classified as Nordics than what we see in Renaissance paintings and on the cover of greeting cards in a Christian bookstore. Reverend Carter’s analysis here is one of the highlights of the book.

Perhaps most controversial to Christian readers will be the notion that Jeshua ben Joseph, otherwise known as Jesus Christ, was an interstellar traveler. Carter, anticipating this, does not dive right into it, but sets the stage with the chapter “Religious Conservative and Liberal Perspectives.” There is much talk of where the Vatican positions itself in terms of ETs, and the UN has an ambassador for them. I have never felt that the existence of life elsewhere in the Universe obliterates human notions of God. It honestly seems silly, and a similar smokescreen to the USAF and RAND and other units of the Military–Industrial–Intelligence Complex pushing the narrative that your average citizen “can’t handle the truth!” to quote the Marine commander in A Few Good Men. The polls Carter references earlier in the book puts that rationale for secrecy to rest.

In the sections on Jeshua, the reverend focuses on several of his quotes, the star of Bethlehem, the miracles he performs, and his Transfiguration. He then postulates on the larger questions of what it might mean for Church doctrine if Jeshua was in fact an interstellar traveler. This is an extended section where Carter’s eloquence, scholarship, and reasoned argumentation truly shine.

In line with my own areas of research, Alien Scriptures next considers the nature of angels and demons in terms of Ancient Alien/Astronaut theory.

The closing sections look at the contentious relationship between science and religion—the meeting of two of the most committed gatekeeper cults on the planet—before expanding out to consider ET phenomena in the Koran.

The mark of a talented writer, speaker, or reverend is the ability to move between the micro (the personal) and the macro (the societal or Universal). Carter employs an excellent technique for doing so in Alien Scriptures—it begins with the micro, becomes increasingly macro, and then returns, in the Afterword, to the micro. A worthy summation of a complex subject, this final section comes back to Carter’s contact experiences and considers the larger meaning of extraterrestrial encounters in light of the precarious status of Mother Earth. The growing role of technology as humankind’s new central deity (what I call the New Technic) is examined, and Carter poses and answers the question of whether or not technologically advanced means spiritually advanced. Certainly, in the case of humanity, what I see is a considerable moral gap that indicates that technology and spirituality are very different and our current condition is that the former greatly outpaces the latter, to our detriment and peril.

With a robust Bibliography and set of Endnotes, Alien Scriptures provides the tools you need to do your own research. Reverend Carter has taken a well-traveled subject and explicated complexities, illuminated hidden puzzle pieces, and offered his own experiences to put it all into context.

Now it is up to us to add our own experiential data and move the conversation forward with love, respect, and vigor, as does Reverend Carter.