What do you do if you’re a man of the cloth and are confronted by the reality of UFOs? I’m not talking about a now commonplace flying saucer sighting, but a middle-of-the-night visitation by a gray alien—an incident that’s then repeated over and over again, with a changing cast of extraterrestrial visitors.

If you’re the Reverend Michael J.S. Carter, who currently serves as the minister of a Unitarian Universalist congregation in North Carolina, you try to make sense of the experience. And since you’re religiously inclined, you don’t look to Google for answers. You turn to spiritual texts, especially the Bible.

That’s the story behind a slim but oddly fascinating book that Reverend Carter wrote titled Alien Scriptures, Extraterrestrials in the Holy Bible. The reverend begins the story by describing his strange encounters, and then goes looking to the Bible for answers.

I first wrote about Reverend Carter’s story 10 years ago and since that time Carter has published three additional books, become a sought-after speaker, and appeared on the TV show Ancient Aliens. But it is Alien Scriptures, Extraterrestrials in the Holy Bible, that contains his origin story, the weird series of events that turned his life upside down and put him on a new path in life.

The Alien Encounters: Unwelcome Visitors in the Night.

Carter makes it clear in the book and on subsequent radio interviews that at one point he didn’t believe in UFOs or extraterrestrials. All that changed one night while he was home sleeping in bed, not in a rural setting but in the middle of New York City. He writes of his initial experience:

My room was lit-up with a bluish white light—lit up as if it was daytime. Standing at the end of the bed staring at me was a being with an egg-shaped head and wrap-around eyes. It truly freaked me out. I don’t believe I have ever been that frightened in my life!

Carter’s response to seeing this freaky-looking alien? Like the 5-year-old in all of us, he pulls the bedcovers over his head. He then hears a whooshing sound and feels like the temperature has dropped drastically in the room. He pulls down the covers and looks again, but the being is gone.

The visitations continue for several months. The beings who drop in on him have different appearances. Most are the classic grays, known for their long limbs, large black eyes, and gray skin or clothing. But he is also visited by a “green and scale-y, Spiderman-looking” entity. He watches as this ET “simply walks through my window and outside the building. I lived on the 15^th floor at the time!”

Carter searches for meaning in the Bible.

It’s unclear what messages the visitors had to pass onto him, though for the most part they leave him with a positive, loving vibe. He then went searching for answers in scripture. He found passages that reinforce his newfound belief that UFOs and aliens have been around since the beginning of man. They may even be messengers sent by God, angels from another dimension.

For example, Carter mentions the visions of the prophet Ezekiel as illustrated in the Old Testament (Ezekiel 1-28). In this biblical passage, Ezekiel claims to have seen “the likeness of the glory of the Lord”. But a quick read reveals that what Ezekiel actually saw may have been something different altogether. From Ezekiel 4-6:

I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings.

Are they really visitors from God? Carter also cites 2 Kings 2:1 where Elijas and his companion Elisha are walking together and “behold a chariot of fire and horses of fires.” To Carter’s way of thinking this is how someone unfamiliar with a UFO, and living in biblical times, might describe one. He also sees the strangely mobile star of Bethlehem as a potential UFO, as described in Matthew 2:9-11:

The star which they saw in the east went before them, until it came and stood over where the young child was.

Is Reverend Carter a kook?

His personal accounts seem to tiptoe on the edge of credibility. Yet the idea that aliens may be here on Earth is backed up a June 2024 news report. Researchers at Harvard (yes, that Harvard) have posited a theory that UFOs, also known as UAPs or unidentified aerial phenomena, may reflect activities of intelligent beings “concealed in stealth” here on Earth. They offer the hypothesis that UAPs may be based underground and the aliens who control them could be “walking among us.”

I came away from Carter’s story convinced that something happened to the Reverend. I’ve written here before how our myths can sometimes come to life in weird and unexplainable ways. The “interdimensional hypothesis” argues UFOs and aliens are a manifestation of a phenomenon that has occurred throughout human history, which in prior ages were ascribed to mythological creatures. The Reverend may simply be one of many who has come up against these creatures in modern times.

It’s interesting to note that Carter believes his encounters with the aliens have been “very positive” and have strengthened his spirituality and sharpened his beliefs. There’s an afterword in the book titled “Lessons from my Contact Experiences on Life and Spirituality,” where Carter offers several compelling insights. I have pulled out my favorites and put them on the list you see below. To me, he seems not a kook, but a wise man, indeed.

10 Spiritual Lessons from Reverend Michael J.S. Carter.

1. 1. I have come to know that what we call “God” is really an Energy … a Spirit … a Source of all Consciousness … and that we are a part of this consciousness.
   2. We can tap into this consciousness, if we are willing to, by just sitting still, through meditation and prayer.
   3. This Energy/Consciousness/Intelligence moves through us, in us, and as us. It is all there is. There is nowhere we can go where this Source is not present.
   4. Recognizing the connectedness of our planet and the universe is the first step in becoming mature spiritually, in cultivating an inner life.
   5. We all have a mission that we come to this planet to fulfill. Our younger years may be used in just trying to figure out what that mission is.
   6. Of course, we can choose not to fulfill that mission. But if we choose to accept it, a good part of that mission is to learn to love and to forgive, oneself as well as others.
   7. Thoughts are things. If you think that life is #$@&%*! that is what life will mirror back to you. We attract to ourselves what we are.
   8. All the answers you need are inside of you. Because all that is Consciousness is inside of us.
   9. There are as many paths to God as there are people who walk those paths.
   10. We might see God not as a person, distinct and separate from the material world, but rather as a spiritual reality in which all life participates.

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