By: Peter Harris
Introduction
For many people, talk of UFOs (unidentified flying objects) and the belief that they are alien spacecraft visiting earth is the stuff of modern myth and not to be taken seriously. There is good reason to take this stance. Project Blue Book (1952-1969), which is the name of the official investigation into UFOs by the United States’ Air Force, reached the conclusion after having studied 12,618 UFO reports that around ninety-four per-cent could be explained as natural or human-made phenomena such as aircraft, stars and weather balloons. Around six per-cent remained unexplained but it was concluded that this was more due to the lack of data than that the objects were of extraterrestrial origin.1 Yet, despite official skepticism, people continue to claim to have experienced UFOs, or UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) as they have become known. Some also claim that in conjunction with the UAP phenomena they experience what has come to be known as alien abduction in which they are forcibly and clandestinely taken aboard aerial craft to undergo medical and cognitive tests and sometimes participate in reproductive acts with aliens and what are reported to be human/alien hybrids. Witnessing UAP and undergoing what purports to be an abduction experience are mystifying and traumatizing. As Christians, we need to be able to give an explanation as to what is happening to people and a means of escaping and avoiding becoming a witness or an abductee.
Classifications of UAP Experiences
According to Dr. J. Allen Hynek (1910-1986), who was an astronomer and scientific advisor to the U.S. Air Force’s UFO investigations (including Project Blue Book), people’s experiences of UAP can be classified in the following ways:
1. Unexplained lights in the night sky which move unusually. These often can be shown to be misidentified stars, aircraft and atmospheric phenomena. What has come to be known as ‘the Phoenix Lights’ is possibly the most famous case of night-time UAP and one that cannot be easily defined as a natural or psychological phenomenon.2 The case occurred on March 13, 1997, and the lights were witnessed by people in the states of Arizona, Nevada and northern Mexico. It came to be known as the Phoenix Lights as most of the witnesses came from or around the city of Phoenix in Arizona. Two phenomena were reported by thousands of witnesses which included police officers, military personnel and pilots: an enormous and silent V-shaped object and five to seven bright lights that hovered in a row and which slowly disappeared one by one. What made the sightings even more convincing was that they were recorded and photographed by many people. The official explanation for the V-shaped object was that it was military flares dropped during a training exercise at the Barry M. Goldwater Range southwest of Phoenix. No official explanation was given for the five to seven stationary lights, but skeptics have reckoned that these were a group of aircraft flying in formation.3
2. Daylight objects that come in a variety of shapes such as discs, ovals and cigars, and which move at extraordinary speeds and patterns. Triangle-shaped craft have also been reported. Another odd feature of these objects is that witnesses often report that they do not make any noise as conventional aircraft do.4 A well-known case that involved daylight sightings is referred to as the Belgium Wave of 1989 to 1990 in which large, black triangular craft of unknown origin were witnessed slowly flying over Belgian cities such as Eupen and Wavre by civilian, police and military observers, and were detected on radar. No official explanation was given.5
3. Radar-visual cases can be hard to explain. These are cases in which UAP are detected on radar and are confirmed visually by civilian and military pilots and other professionally trained observers. The fact that electronic instruments and individuals trained to recognize other phenomena in the sky have detected them means that even if the small possibility of faulty equipment and human error is factored in, most of these cases remain baffling.6 A case of a radar-visual sighting that grabbed people’s attention is the ‘Tic Tac’ UAP Case of 2004. This occurred off the coast of Southern California around midday. Multiple US Navy officers and crew members on board the aircraft carrier Nimitz observed a white object that resembled a tic tac. It was said to be the size of a commercial aircraft and which moved in impossible directions and speeds. Radar data confirmed that at one point it dropped 80,000 feet to sea level in less than a second. The US Government has acknowledged that this is a genuine case of a UAP without explaining what it was.7
Witnesses of UAP not only see them from afar or mediated through technology such as radar but also close up. It was Hynek who introduced the term ‘Close Encounter’ to describe sightings that occur within five-hundred feet (around 152 meters) of the witness, and he subdivided these as follows:
CE-I (Close Encounter of the First Kind) in which UAP are seen at close range, but there are no interactions between them and the witness/es and the environment.8 A good example of this kind of case is the Westall UFO Encounter that occurred in 1966. Over two-hundred students and teachers at Westall High School, Melbourne, Australia, claimed to have witnessed a silver disc descend, hover and then fly off at rapid speed. Some witnesses asserted that it briefly landed in a field. It is alleged that authorities visited the school soon after and instructed people not to talk about it.9
CE-II (Close Encounter of the Second Kind) in which UAP are seen and there are physical effects such as scorch marks on the ground, high radiation readings and interference with electronic equipment such as car radios.10 One such case comes from Socorro, New Mexico in 1964. While chasing a speeding car, police officer Lonnie Zamora heard a roaring sound and saw a flame in the sky. He thought it was an explosion and so went to investigate. He went on to testify that what he witnessed was not a fire but an egg-shaped object on the ground with landing legs. As he approached, the craft flew away silently. When the case was investigated by the police and the military, scorched bushes and landing impressions in the ground were discovered at the site.11
CE-III (Close Encounter of the Third Kind) consists of a sighting of UAP and their occupants which may be described as humanoid or not. There is no requirement for such a case to include communication or interaction between the human witnesses and the ‘aliens’, but sometimes witnesses report this.12 A dramatic example of this kind of sighting comes from Zimbabwe. In 1994, over sixty students aged six to twelve from Ariel School, Ruwa, testified that during their mid-morning recess they witnessed a disc-shaped craft land in a field just beyond the school grounds. The children said they saw small humanoid beings with large black eyes and thin bodies. The entities made eye contact with the children and some of the children reported receiving telepathic messages warning against humanity’s damage to the environment. Teachers and other staff did not witness the craft but affirmed the frightened state of the children whose witness reports were consistent with each other’s.13
Others have added categories to Hynek’s typology.14 Budd Hopkins added CE-IV which is abduction by UAP occupants of humans who report they are taken on board craft and subjected to medical examinations. Dr Steven Greer writes of voluntary, human-initiated contact whereby people who wish to see UAPs will enter into deep meditative states and communicate a peaceful desire to see them (CE-V). CE-VI describes contact that leads to the accidental or even deliberate injury or death of human witnesses. CE-VII refers to supposed hybridization programs in which humans reproduce with aliens for some unknown purpose.
A Theology of UAP and Alien Abductions
UAP are therefore varied and complex in their interactions with humans. If people are claiming they see and interact with UAP and their occupants, whether they are mistaken because they are misidentifying psychological and natural phenomena for real objects and entities, or whether they indeed are having contact with non-human intelligence in craft that defy the laws of physics, it is the responsibility of Christians to have a way of helping such people.
The purpose of this article, therefore, is to suggest a theological understanding of what UAP and their occupants are and a description of what Christian researchers in the field have discovered is effective in enabling experiencers.15 who are often left confused and terrified, to terminate their abductions.
To delineate a theology of UAP that is Christ-centered, it is important to state three important Christian beliefs regarding what beings exist in the universe and their relationship to God:
- all beings have been created by God (Genesis 1:1).
- God is omnipotent and therefore able to do all logically possible things.16
- there are beings who exist who are neither God nor earthly creatures such as humans, animals and fish. Angels and demons are the most well-known of these beings within the Christian worldview.17
Within a Christian framework, it follows from these three beliefs that whatever is the source of UAP and whatever the identity of their occupants, they are created beings who are not human or earthly creatures and yet are inferior to their creator God.
Formulating a Christian praxis of UAP and in response to abduction experiences that is grounded on the above three axioms is made difficult by few resources formulated from a Christian perspective on the subject. Possibly, Christians are deterred from talking and writing about the subject because it is the object of ridicule, vulnerable to hoaxes, and those who believe they have seen UAP or have been taken aboard craft are often treated at best as mistaken and at worst dupers and mentally ill.
But we are living at a time when UAP are perhaps taken more seriously or at least as seriously as they have ever been. According to the Pew Research Center, within the US context, sixty-five per-cent of people believe that extraterrestrial life exists and a slight majority (fifty-one per-cent) proposes that military reports of UAP are evidence that extraterrestrial life exists.18 Furthermore, the American intelligence community and Congress take the subject seriously. At the request of the Congressional Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued an unclassified report into military experiences of UAP in June 2021.19 It is important to make clear that the report does not draw any firm conclusions as to what UAP are due to the paucity of high quality reporting, but the report notes that UAP exhibit unusual flight patterns which merit further, careful investigation.20 With all this in mind, it is imperative that there are theological and practical responses from the Church. This article recommends an approach that is backed by two of the most knowledgeable Christian commentators on the UAP: Dr Hugh Ross and Joseph Jordan.
What are UAP?
Hugh Ross, the prominent Christian apologist and an astrophysicist,<21 provides a penetrating account of what UAP are for he combines knowledge of Scripture with scientific prowess in his understanding of UAP. He is the co-author of Lights in the Sky & Little Green Men: A Rational Christian Look at UFOs and Extraterrestrials.22 His co-authors are Mark Clark who is Emeritus Professor of Political Science and National Security Studies at California State University, San Bernardino<23 and Kenneth R. Samples who is an apologist with an MA from Talbot School of Theology.24 In particular, the combined knowledge of Ross as a scientist and Clark as a specialist in national security makes this book an indispensable one to the Christian seeking answers to the mystery of UAP.
In an interview with Paul Lyndon Burtwell for the You Tube channel Reasonable Faith UK, Ross identifies UAP as a kind of non-physical thing. His thesis that UAPs are non-physical comes from not only the way in which they move contrary to the laws of physics, but also how when they travel at extraordinary high speeds, there is no sonic boom or heat friction. When witnesses see UAP crash, there is no wreckage that is recovered. The occupants Ross regards as inter-dimensional beings, or spiritual beings, who can enter and act in our world and who are possibly fallen angels or demons. He is certain that they are malevolent and hostile towards humanity.25
In the Name of Jesus
Witnessing a UAP can be distressing, but what is arguably more distressing is Budd Hopkins’ CE-IV which is also known within popular parlance as ‘alien abduction’. Some experiencers report the phenomenon known as missing time in which their daily lives are disrupted by a UAP sighting and then what happens next is not remembered. The experiencer then finds him or herself some hours later back at home or in a different location or driving on the route they were on, but further along without knowing how s/he got there. The assumption is that during the missing time, there was interaction between the UAP occupants and the experiencer on board the craft. Some experiencers resort to hypnosis to uncover ostensible memories of what happened during that time whereas others prefer not to know. Hopkins was a pioneer of the use of this technique for he calculated that only twenty-five per-cent of abduction cases were remembered without the use of hypnosis.26 According to Hopkins, there are patterns within experiencers’ purported memories under hypnosis: medical examinations, reproductive procedures, and a lifetime of experiences.27 It is David M Hopkins’ view that those who consciously remember their abduction report the same patterns of experiences as those recalled under hypnosis.28
The disturbing nature of abduction experiences is confirmed by psychological research. Richard McNally and Susan Clancy are professors of psychology at Harvard University. They dismiss the hypothesis that people are actually being kidnapped by aliens and explain abductions experiences as a form of sleep paralysis.29 However, in their research into the nature of abduction experiences, they found that experiencers showed the same level, and at times, higher levels of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) than those who had developed PTSD for other reasons such as combat and sexual abuse.30
McNally and Clancy’s conclusion does not seem to have given them pause for thought as to whether the level of PTSD displayed by experiencers suggests that what they claimed to have happened is as real as other causes of PTSD. They are working within a materialist framework in which entities such as UAP occupants do not exist and anomalous experiences are the product of brain-states. However, as we have seen from point three outlined above and Ross’ analysis, we have good reason to take seriously the suffering of experiencers as the result of objective experiences. What Christian hope can there be therefore for those severely traumatized by evil beings?
Enter Joseph Jordan, an experienced UAP researcher and Christian who set up the CE4 Research Group to spread the good news that abduction experiences can be stopped by calling upon Jesus’ help.31 In an interview for the ‘Daily Dose of Wisdom Podcast’, Jordan informs us that his research is based upon over six-hundred abduction cases.32 He explains how abduction experiences are not physical experiences in which people are taken aboard craft, but spiritual, visionary experiences in which people are made to think that this is what has happened to them.33 The abduction experience is a simulation rather than a real situation. The purpose of these experiences is to draw people away from Jesus Christ through the denigration of Christianity by the beings responsible for the experiences and through the impartation of anti-Christian messages.34 Those who are susceptible to the abduction simulation are those who are involved in the New Age and the Occult.35 Childhood abduction simulations are caused by parents and guardians who rather than spiritually guarding their children, open the door to the entities by engaging in paranormal activities.36 The only thing that stops the abduction simulation-and Joseph Jordan is emphatic about this-is when the experiencer calls upon Jesus Christ for help. Reciting Scripture and humming or singing a hymn also appear to work. The experiencer does not even have to be a Christian for these responses to work.37 UAP witnessed without any contact also flee at the invocation of Jesus’ name.38 Jordan is not the only researcher saying this. He refers to John De Souza, a former FBI agent and UFO researcher, who affirms the same thing.39 Moreover, Jordan describes in the interview how he approached non-Christian UFO researchers about cases where people have called on Jesus for help and they confirmed they knew about such cases and had not gone public about them because they had not known what to make of them.40
Conclusion
The UAP and abduction simulations are very mysterious and terrifying. But it is important to emphasize that there is hope and victory from a Christian perspective. The Bible declares that Jesus Christ, who is both God the Son and a man, is supreme over all creation. Paul writes this to the Philippian Christians: God has highly exalted Jesus ‘and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (2:9-11). Therefore, deceitful entities that move in unconventional ways in the sky, create false memories of abduction experiences and impart anti-Christian philosophies flee at the name of Jesus as Jordan, De Souza and non-Christian UAP researchers have discovered. UAP and abduction simulations are not a loony, fringe subject, but the manifestation and work of the kingdom of darkness that is deceiving and traumatizing people. It is part of the Gospel proclamation that cosmic evil has been defeated at the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus (Colossians 2:15). We Christians therefore have an obligation to take UAPs and abduction simulations seriously while declaring that freedom from and victory over these phenomena lie in a relationship with Jesus’.
ENDNOTES
1. ‘Project Blue Book’, OpenAI, 27 October 2025, https://chatgpt.com/
2. ‘Classification Systems’, https://cufos.org/types-of-ufos/classification-systems/ (accessed 27 October 2025, 19:22).
3. ‘The Pheonix Lights’, OpenAI, 27 October 2025, https://chatgpt.com/
4. ‘Classification Systems’, https://cufos.org/types-of-ufos/classification-systems/ (accessed 27 October 2025, 19:22).
5. ‘The Belgian UFO Wave’, Open AI, 27 October 2025, https://chatgpt.com/
6. ‘Classification Systems’, https://cufos.org/types-of-ufos/classification-systems/ (accessed 27 October 2025, 19:22).
7. ‘Tic Tac UFO Case 2004’, Open AI, 27 October 2025, https://chatgpt.com/
8. ‘Classification Systems’, https://cufos.org/types-of-ufos/classification-systems/ (accessed 27 October 2025, 19:22).
9. ‘Westall UFO Case’, Open AI, 27 October 2025, https://chatgpt.com/
10. ‘Classification Systems’, https://cufos.org/types-of-ufos/classification-systems/ (accessed 27 October 2025, 19:22).
11. ‘Lonnie Zamora’, Open AI, 27 October 2025, https://chatgpt.com/
12. ‘Classification Systems’, https://cufos.org/types-of-ufos/classification-systems/ (accessed 27 October 2025, 19:22).
13. ‘Ariel School UFO’, Open AI, 27 October 2025, https://chatgpt.com/
14. ‘Classification Systems’, https://cufos.org/types-of-ufos/classification-systems/ (accessed 27 October 2025, 19:22).
15. This is the word used to denote those who claim to have been abducted by beings from UAPs. It seems that this term is preferred to the word ‘abductee’ which suggests that those who believe they have been taken aboard craft have only bad experiences, whereas some report good experiences and do not wish to be seen as victims.
16. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester and Grand Rapids, MI: IVP and Zondervan, 2000),p. 211.
17. Ibid., pp. 397-412.
18. Courtenay Kennedy and Arnold Lau, Pew Research Center, ‘Most Americans believe in intelligent life beyond Earth; few see UFOs as a major national security threat’, 30 June 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/06/30/most-americans-believe-in-intelligent-life-beyond-earth-few-see-ufos-as-a-major-national-security-threat/ (accessed 23 October, 10:57).
19. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ‘Preliminary Assessment:Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’, 21 June 2021, https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf (accessed 23 October 2025).
20. Ibid, p.2.
21. ‘The Side B Stories-Hugh Ross’, https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/the-side-b-stories-hugh-ross/ (accessed 23 October 2025).
22. The book was published by Ross’ apologetics ministry, Reasons to Believe, in May 2002.
23. ‘Mark Clark: About This Author’, https://www.amazon.com/stores/Mark-Clark/author/B0DS4G7S87?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true (accessed 23 October 2025, 12:02).
24. ‘Kenneth R. Samples’, https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/183274.Kenneth_R_Samples (accessed 23 October 2025, 12:33).
25. Reasonable Faith UK, ‘Hugh Ross – UFO and UAP sightings’, You Tube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39-8tPBuQUc (accessed 28 October 2025, 10:37).
26. John Greenewald, ‘Hypnotic Regression and UFO Abductions: A 1989 Look at the Technique and Its Role in the Phenomenon’, https://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/hypnotic-regression-and-ufo-abductions-a-1989-look-at-the-technique-and-its-role-in-the-phenomenon/ (accessed 27 October 2025, 07:43).
27. John Greenewald, ‘Hypnotic Regression and UFO Abductions: A 1989 Look at the Technique and Its Role in the Phenomenon’, https://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/hypnotic-regression-and-ufo-abductions-a-1989-look-at-the-technique-and-its-role-in-the-phenomenon/ (accessed 27 October 2025, 07:43).
28. David M. Jacobs, ‘Examining Abduction Memories’, https://www.davidmichaeljacobs.com/memory/ (27 October 2025, 08:01).
29. William J. Cromie, ‘Alien abduction claims examined’, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2003/02/alien-abduction-claims-examined-2/ (accessed 27 October 2025, 08:24).
30. Ibid.
31. ‘CE4 RESEARCH GROUP – MISSION AND VISION STATEMENTS’, https://stopalienabduction.com/ce4mission/ (accessed 27 October 2025, 14:06).
32. Daily Dose of Wisdom, ‘UFO Researcher Exposes What Congressional “Whistleblowers” Left Out’, You Tube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVs5vEt7doo (accessed 27 October 2025, 14:45).
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.